I am personally acquainted with several of my state's congressional representatives and have met several others (from differing parties as well).

Let me assure you, political greed, stupidity and dishonesty are not exclusive to one party or the other.

Evil people are as evil people does.  Things like this just reveal the sort of things many people you rub shoulders with and smile at everyday will do when they feel they can get away with it without being caught.

It's not exclusive to politicians, either... bankers, CEO's and everyday people fit into the greed, dishonesty and stupidity categories.

Something to do with human nature, I'm told... that some people cannot resist their worst urges.

The thing is, I find these scammers, hackers and malware proliferators far worse than any politician or banker.  With the latter it's business as usual and you can sort of understand it.... but with the majority of malware writers, there is no rhyme or reason behind it, other than they can and figure being a major pain in the ass is clever.

That major pain in the ass can send you to the poor house in a heartbeat. Kudos to trendMicro for being on top of this.

Aye, Cap'n, peel their feet and salt 'em, I sez!

Aye, bosun seldom, ye be on tha right deck thar... n' after that us'll keel'aul tha blaggards afore us takes ter usin' 'em fer cannon practice.

And how have you been me old mate... well and good, I trust?

Just a heads up here

I just clicked on a couple of Yahoo News link about the earthquake in Japan and dialog boxes came up wanting to know if I wanted to install an application/browser addon I'd never seen or heard of before... no actual name just a bunch of letters and numbers [AN 30 something or other]

This dialog does not appear when I click on any other Yahoo links, just ones concerned with the earthquake, so I was very suspicious and shut them down the instant they appeared. 

Anyhow, folks, be careful, it might be harmless, but with the various bastards out there it's probably not worth the risk to find out what it does should you also see it.

I wouldn't install a damned thing. If they can't give you news w/o an "add on", then it's nothing but "bad news", and more's the pity on the poor fools that operate computers w/o a clue.

I'd hazard a guess that Yahoo is not behind this 'request' to add junk to peoples PC's.... because it's not something they've done in the past, at least to my knowledge.

While certain politicians may be greedy, they know it is best to keep the wealth in the hands of their constituents so they can regularly and repeatedly skim the cream off the top.  These scammers are not just greedy, they want to ruin your life to line thier pockets. Not to mention the thrill of it. And if you think that's bad just remember thoughout the history of disasters there have been those among the survivors - yep right there in it - who have tried to scam and exploit the pain of other survivors.  It happened in New Orleans, It happened when the Indonsian Tsunami hit, It happened during the Black Plague, Need I go on?

That's exactly it, for some, there are no depths to which they will not sink, no level of depravity they will not visit.

Nature of the species. One day .......

Notre espece en nature...

Unforutnately, we have to start thinking that way.  It is very sad that there are some people so depraved as to use catastrophies to further their own crimes.  But it is a fact of life.

Actually? These guys are the cyber equivalent of the looters who always rush into areas hit by disasters to steal what they can.

Apprehend, convict, sentence to 50 lashes well laid on. But ... nah ... we're too civilized to do that aren't we.

Well put!