Or the question should rather be: Should there be any ethical screening before allowing an ad to run in front of millions? If not then what are the possible outcomes? I think pretty grim. So here’s this Ad that’s running on several big sites including Yahoo. Just a little reading revealed the scam.

Where? Yahoo. Proof:

There was a similar ad campaign a few months back. I was not bothered but the reason this one clicked me was the mere stupidity of the language and the person’s claim which is so absurd that even someone who know very little about latest computing will figure out.

Ok, so I clicked, landed on the blank page asking my email which is so typical of all these scam dens. Punched in and was taken to a ‘Thank You’ page which actually gave me a glimpse to an undiscovered treasure lying just there waiting to be picked up by someone checking his Yahoo mail and accidently clicking on the ad leading to it. The plot is set up.

Even after taking so much, I still read on, hoping to find a clue. This anonymous ‘John Meriwether’ (it was a signed page) claims that Microsoft is going to collapse because some ‘secret’ company has developed a ‘technology’ that will make all desktop computing obsolete. I think he never figured out the difference between software and hardware.

He used the phrases like ‘utility computing’ and ‘everything on some remote super computer’. I think you must have guessed it by now, haven’t you? Cloud computing! But he never used the word.

If the page were titled ‘Cloud Computing for Noobs’ then I probably would have let it go but it’s a scam from the very outset. He is further asking for home address so that he could ‘mail us his secrets’ and the stock ticker of this ‘secret’ company! Huh? I mean seriously?

Look at heading of his confession page:

Ha! wtf?!

The worst part is that Compete is showing that 23,000+ people visited this page last month! What the heck is wrong with everyone or is it just me who smells such idiotic scams so early?