2009-05-06

Oprah, queen of the sheeple, promotes malware

Oprah Winfrey. She mentions something, it turns to gold. Seemingly, any book, service or gadget she endorses immediately spreads like wildfire. Yesterday, it was KFC's new "Kentucky Grilled Chicken"

Today, I get all kinds of email from 'friends' (brainwashed sheeple) that "Oprah is giving away free chicken!" (Beware, I wouldn't click any links on that page without some security plugins like NoScript installed)


Oprah isn't giving away squat. Oprah's site links to unthinkfc.com (not linked), a site telling you to "unthink what you thought about KFC" (unsurprisingly owned by KFC), which links to Coupons.com. Coupons.com doesn't give you graphic representations of coupons. They install software that is supposed to keep ne'er do wells such as ourselves from printing off thousands of copies of these coupons. Obviously with the advent of cheap color copy/fax/print machines, this really doesn't stop us. But that's not the point.

Does this raise any red flags for you? It does for me!


Coupons.com installs its "coupon printer" application with classic spyware-like traits such as failing to actually uninstall itself when asked, tracking you and even printing information onto these coupons to correlate not only which coupons you print, but which ones get used and where. [Reference: Wired]

So congratulations, Oprah. Regardless your knowledge of the situation and likely without any ill will, you just pwnt almost all of your computer-owning sheeple. 9,000 Internets to you!

Update: unkinkfc.com now links to a PDF coupon download. Kudos to them!

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