Ok, let's start at the begining.
I was looking on youtube for a particular clip from the Simpsons to include in an email I was composing around a news article regarding traces of nuclear waste being detected in fish near a nuclear plant. The clip I was looking for was part of the simpson's episode with "blinky the 3 eye'd fish (which homer caugh near mr. Burns nuclear plant).
I found the clip on youtube, but when I tried to play it, a message came up that it had been pulled due to some copyright violation or something, but that it could be found by going to some address that was minaturized by someone using the tiny url service.
After entering that into my browser, it took me to hot movies.com, but the main screen was blocked by some window asking me to take one of the listed surveys in order to gain access, and it had a link to some help screen below it.
Being a bit cautious and also to make sure I understood what was going on, it said that I need to complete one of the surveys and when I did it would automatically let me into the site... Easy as that!
So I cliked on the 1st survey on the list... Some stupid quiz thing with 10 questions... But before the quiz, I had to fill out personal info, including my wireless carrier and cell phone number
I completed the quiz quickly, then it said I needed to click something else to get my results and I should expect some pop up to open asking me to "run" the program, and I should hit "run" to receive my results
So I followed the instructions, which then caused another popup to open, asking me to click "run" on that one as well
Big mistake
Somewhere along the way came options to add a "bing" tool bar and some other things, which I cleared ALL the check boxes (indicating I didn't want any more bloatware on my machine)
(note, I may have this step out of order, since all the evidence is conveniently gone and I'm working from memory)
When I clicked the 2nd run button it didn't give me the results, nor did it let me into hot movies.com... It sent me to aNOTHER idiot test site
I had several windows running at the same time, as I was multi tasking... And being that I really didn't have time to play with hotmovie.com or it's affilliated sites poping up and trying to gather more personal info, I just clicked to close the new web page that had opened, besides, the simpsons clip wasn't all that important to include in an email I was composing.
When I clicked to close that ONE page with the 2nd idiot test log in, it automatically closed ALL my windows which I had opened.
Just as I was saying "oh, crap" because now I'd have to re-open everything to get back to what I was doing, suddenly 6 new windows re-opened on my desktop, each of them going to the bing site as my new home page AND a bing tool bar had been added, which I specifically did NOT want added to my machine.
AND, when I went back to hotmovies.com to see if I at least could access the clip I originally went there for? Nope... You gotta take a survey to get in
So, after all that, my machine slowed down and I seem to have downloaded a bunch of spyware from that episode.
It's hard to say... They may have a great movie site behind all the bogus hoops you have to jump through as they try and collect your personal info, including cell phone, but you'll never get to see it because their phishing system won't let you in
I'm wondering if the movie site is really just bait?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have more spyware programs to run to get my system back... Idiots! (by the way, you're a REAL idiot if you think I put my real phone number into your phishing site, idiot)
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