{"id":3639,"date":"2010-03-06T13:16:19","date_gmt":"2010-03-06T18:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=3639"},"modified":"2021-12-28T17:12:27","modified_gmt":"2021-12-28T22:12:27","slug":"malware-via-google-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/malware-via-google-images\/","title":{"rendered":"Malware via Google Images"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>My post today has nothing to do with geography so feel free to come back tomorrow if you like. Rather, I&#8217;m passing along something nefarious I ran across on Google Images. This happened as I investigated someone hijacking one of the photos that I display on my website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Take a look at this photograph<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/graphics\/genealogy\/HULL_Marvin_Ross-2.jpg\" alt=\"Marvin Ross Hull\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This distant relation of mine, served as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/genealogy\/surnames_h\/HULL_Marvin_Ross.html\">a dentist in Texas<\/a> in the early Twentieth Century. He became an upstanding member of the community and passed away in 1938. So why, I wondered, did his photo suddenly start appearing on all sorts of oddball websites?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"\/blog\/?p=151\">I move very swiftly against bandwidth thieves<\/a>. Nonetheless I couldn&#8217;t get to this specific issue until the weekend because of other pressing concerns. Of course by that time the image had been hijacked hundreds of times. Finally, I did manage to switch the image this morning. So that-should-be-that in a few days once Google rechecks the source code and refreshes its cache.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this instance my tangential ancestor happened to have a name similar to a Canadian actor that I&#8217;d never heard of before I checked the Intertubes. I&#8217;m not repeating the names because I don&#8217;t want to give the scammer an easy way to hijack it again. Specifically, my guy&#8217;s middle name and surname matched the actor although his first name did not. Nonetheless, check Google Images for this actor&#8217;s name and my guy&#8217;s photo will appear along with several others (for now). They&#8217;ve obviously used Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to push this photo onto the first page of a Google Image query. Pure evil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Warning &#8212; Scammers at Work!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Click on that image on Google and the website <em>that is stealing my photograph <\/em> will try to trick you into downloading malware. It offers a fake virus scan if you really want to know. This will happen even if you&#8217;re looking at it as a preview. It will give you some sort of BS message about your computer being infected and if you respond you will deliver a nice little virus payload upon yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I generally use either a MacBook running the Camino browser or a Linux netbook running Firefox, so I feel pretty safe. I made doubly-sure by killing the application without clicking anything. These types of situation figured into my purchase of non-Microsoft operating systems. Naturally, I will never go back to a PC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My further research shows that these types of scams using &#8220;celebrity&#8221; photos on Google Images has become surprisingly common. I just wanted to pass that along in case you haven&#8217;t run across something like this before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Be careful out there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My post today has nothing to do with geography so feel free to come back tomorrow if you like. Rather, I&#8217;m passing along something nefarious I ran across on Google Images. This happened as I investigated someone hijacking one of the photos that I display on my website. Take a look at this photograph This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,203],"tags":[2101,2100,2099,854],"class_list":["post-3639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-tools","tag-bandwidth-theft","tag-google-images","tag-malware","tag-seo"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Malware via Google Images - Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Be careful -- scammers are posting stolen photos on Google Images in attempt to get people to click and download software viruses!\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/malware-via-google-images\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Malware via Google Images - Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Be careful -- scammers are posting stolen photos on Google Images in attempt to get people to click and download software viruses!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/malware-via-google-images\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-03-06T18:16:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-12-28T22:12:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/graphics\/genealogy\/HULL_Marvin_Ross-2.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Twelve Mile Circle\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@TheReal12MC\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@TheReal12MC\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Twelve Mile Circle\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.howderfamily.com\\\/blog\\\/malware-via-google-images\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.howderfamily.com\\\/blog\\\/malware-via-google-images\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Twelve Mile Circle\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.howderfamily.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/9d80a5a18ef467b299e8ca0ed890ba1e\"},\"headline\":\"Malware via Google Images\",\"datePublished\":\"2010-03-06T18:16:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-12-28T22:12:27+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.howderfamily.com\\\/blog\\\/malware-via-google-images\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":451,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.howderfamily.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/9d80a5a18ef467b299e8ca0ed890ba1e\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.howderfamily.com\\\/blog\\\/malware-via-google-images\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.howderfamily.com\\\/graphics\\\/genealogy\\\/HULL_Marvin_Ross-2.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Bandwidth Theft\",\"Google Images\",\"Malware\",\"SEO\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Miscellaneous\",\"Tools\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.howderfamily.com\\\/blog\\\/malware-via-google-images\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.howderfamily.com\\\/blog\\\/malware-via-google-images\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.howderfamily.com\\\/blog\\\/malware-via-google-images\\\/\",\"name\":\"Malware via Google Images - 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