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Latest McDonald's Giveaway Prize: Spyware
from the not-lovin'-it dept
McDonald's Japan came up with what it certainly thought was a great promotion recently: print a code on its soft-drink cups, then get users to send in a text message with it to see if they'd won one of 10,000 MP3 players pre-loaded with 10 free songs. But not only were the MP3 players some junky-looking McDonald's-branded model, but they came with an added bonus: spyware. Apparently the devices were laced with the QQPass trojan, which logs keystrokes and passwords. McDonald's Japan has apologized and set up a hotline for affected consumers to call. Just what good that will do remains to be seen if a consumer's passwords for financial sites have already been stolen. Ah, those halcyon days when all you had to worry about from McDonald's giveaways was keeping babies from choking on their small pieces...
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Does anyone know if this was done on purpose (ie: Because of some really moronic marketer who might have thought this was a good idea?) or due to a hacker or wannabe who works there?
At this point I would have NO trouble believing a marketting exec or a committee of them sitting around and thinking this is a GREAT idea.
sigh
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Big mac is watching
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Re:
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I'm glad I finally figured out years ago that McDonald's sucks all the joy out of their food and sells it to places like Wendy's on the side. I'm no food snob, but the last time I ate a Big Mac (in the mid 90's), I felt afterwards like I had eaten something, and I remembered the act of eating, but no sensation of taste or enjoyment remained in my mind.
I'm no food snob, but that was horrible. That McDonald's has to resort to all these giveaways to entice customers is no surprise to anyone. If they would get back to selling food people want, maybe they could give their hyperactive marketing department a little breather.
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D'UH
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to: concept junkie
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Re:
I'm no food snob...
Haha, no one said you were. Stop being so self conscious.
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People have been thrown in jail for less. Really. That has gone a step beyond your typical spyware app, wich monitors and reports your browsing habits etc to a marketing company.. this *is* cyber crime.
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Re: D'UH
1. Open folder to view files
2. Run pointless_application.exe
which would you do? oh wait, you're probably an idiot.... nm
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Re: Re: D'UH
Seriously though, a lot of people that would be getting these prices might be very tempted to click some 'McDonalds Fun & Games.exe" found on their McDonalds giveaway.
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McDonalds
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I just thought I'd add the comment for balance..
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McD
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Re: McD
Honestly though, how did this happen? Wait, I know, when they gave away the songs teh got the trojan and the DMR mixed up and thats how all those trojans got on those computers. Lets blame Sony for thinking up the enitre DMR thing.
Wouldn't it be funny if that really happened and McDonalds sued Sony for them getting the two mixed up?
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Re:
As a manager for McDonalds, i've had to endure lectures on how hard the company works to avoid bad publicity, because lets be honest now, McDs don't really need to do anything to get bad publicity. So the thought of them risking something like that knowing it could backfire just doesn't add up to me.
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Re: Re: D'UH
Does anyone know what music came with the things?
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Re: Re: D'UH
In direct proportion to your intelligence percentile in a population of any size, other people appear as stupid to you.
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Re: ConceptJunkie
Trust me, they'll sell plenty of 'burgers' with or without the MP3 players.
Food snob.
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Same old story
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Snickering
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'doh
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Pet peeve
Rather "effected".
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Re: Pet peeve
This cold is effectively affecting me...
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Re: Re: D'UH
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Spam-N-Eggs Please!
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Turned off after Monopoly scam
I'll bet corporate is very upset about this one...
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Re: McD
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Trojan?
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Re: Re:
I'm 100% speculating, but the "gold" load was probably infected at the factory where these things were assembled. If intentionally infected, it was someone working on the image in the factory, not someone in McDonald's managment.
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Re: Re: Re: D'UH
Don't forget to send this new "... dummies" book to that idiot "hacker" up there. He must've been infected by a kids meal from japan. sorry dude, but you need schoolin'
While we're at it, who is planning on letting the macincrap users in on the fact that they keep blabbing about being malware resistant and people will finally take notice and start writing malware for macs.... only one reason it hasn't happened yet... there aren't enough of you morons using macs for it to be profitable, or even to matter at all. yeah, keep pushing your macs ;)
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Re: ConceptJunkie
It's called Chipotle.
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Re: #34
The difference before was something along the lines of the following example
Windows:
this is data in memory: ioioiiii
Mac:
this is data in memory: 11110101
the difference is in the order of the bits
Now with the Mac-intel the difference is more like
windows:
ioioiiii
macintel:
IOIOIIII
the diference is more just the format
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right...
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Re: Re: #34
Keep in mind that Linux has been running on x86 chipsets for a LONG time, and code written for Windows AND x86 lacked not only the equivalent system calls in Linux, but might not even get to EXECUTE on Linux.
Also keep in mind that Mac-Intel can only run X, which is based on UNIX.
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not happy!!!
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