Topic: How do you feel about people carelessly running likely viruses? (Read 690 times)

I'm not talking about exploiting in general.

I was only referring to the specific cases were the exploit was so evident that anyone who actually thinks before doing anything wouldn't have done it.

I clearly failed in communicating, since the only responses I got were these, I give up.

THis. I think I had a simular talk with a certain few people here about them installing shit on other peoples computers to make them mine without the owners knowlege. They thought it was no big deal because :
A: they downloaded something they should not have therefor installing the virus to make it become a mining bot .
B: Thought is was no big deal because really they were only costing the owner who does not know " a few bucks a day in electricity"

IMO, those that do and/or think its funny or okay with shit like this happening... Karma is a bitch. It might not happen now or even soon, but things do catch up to you.

I never suggested that, but I assumed somebody might, hence I wanted to know other people's opinions.

My personal opinion is that:
• the exploiter is in the wrong, but with a bit of discount due to extreme stupidity of the exploited
• the exploited is also partly in the wrong, because he could have avoided this very easily, and instead fueled this illicit activity (hence encouraging other people to perform such activities, too)


If you run that kind of stuff in a virtual machine, you definitely don't have your brain switched off, so it doesn't count.

I guess this kind of activity is a crime in most countries, so if someone lost real money with that they could put the guy in jail, theoretically.
From the moral point of view, I think it's not a huge problem. The people with significant value in their bitcoin wallets should be already smart enough to not get caught, and the minor losses of the losers are the payment for the basic security lesson.

Anyone on a PC should use a sandbox such as:

http://www.sandboxie.com

There are stupid people everywhere and I would count yourself among them if you think a victim's stupidity makes exploiting them justifiable.

i don't think my virtual machine cares

This is only the most recent example, but something like that happens every day.

Someone post something which is extremely shady, and possibly without any apparent benefit (at least scammers usually try to lure you with greed, here there's nothing).

This was so patently an infected file that I was amazed how many people jumped in anyway without thinking, leaving their brains completely powered off.
Me and others posted warnings, and some people were still jumping in nonetheless.

I find this both entertaining and interesting on a social perspective, it is like looking at lemmings jumping off a cliff, without even the excuse that they might be stupid rodents: those are people who willingly refused to think, knowing that this would make them risk a lot of money and time, without any benefit, and did that anyway.

What do you think about that?

Do you consider it's ok to exploit them, since they took efforts into being exploited? Or at least it's partly justifiable? Or do you think it's still 100% wrong nonetheless?
Irregardless of what you think about the exploiter, do you think they should receive some extra punishment, since they fueled a system which affected more users after them? (i.e. somebody notices that someone is downloading, so he stupidly assumes it means it's ok and downloads too...)


edit: since apparently it wasn't clear, I'd stress that I do not personally condone those actions, still I wanted to know if you do, how much, and why.


edit again: locked, since it looks like I wasn't able to communicate clearly what I meant, and got only answers from people who misunderstood. Sigh.