[at-fates-hands]

>>> Is that last question wrong, and are there actually people that truly, unequivocally enjoy adware?

I used to think the same thing, then met a guy who was a fairly prolific ad spammer. He basically said the reason any type of adware exists is because it actually works. He said if nobody ever bought anything or clicked on any of the annoying pop-ups, adware would disappear inside of six months.

In essence, for web savy users, it's completely baffling why people would want this on their PC's. In reality, there are a ton, and I mean a TON of people who do click on the links and do buy from these types of invasive ads, which continue to be a very lucrative, very competitive market.

[amit_m]

That's a pretty lame rationalization.

My mom was a victim of some adware and she had no idea. She thought she was seeing google ads or something and only asked me for help because a bunch of stuff stopped working.

Just because something is profitable does not mean it adds value to the world.

[heywire]

Brian Krebs' book Spam Nation talks about this quite a bit. So many people still buy prescription medications and fake watches and such through junk email. Enough that it still makes financial sense for the spammers to keep at it.

[taylorbuley]

Interestingly, I read an academic paper that discussed how spamming vendors often actually deliver on these prescription medications, etc. You'd think they'd take the money and and run scammers, but in fact it's marketing for actual commerce.

[JackuB]

I think lot of those real businesses are selling their products this way, because scam/adware networks are much cheaper than AdSense (few dollars for ten thousands of views)

I saw lot of adware ads are also for courses for _rich life_/making money on internet etc. I can imagine these businesses' target demo are people that get affected by adware.

[DanBC]

Although the medication you get may be counterfeit and either contaminated or not the actual chemical that you want.