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Comment by mseebach | Hacker News Reader

Probably an instance of this?

[T]he obvious giveaways are used as a pre-qualifier, to ensure with the least possible effort that the ONLY people who respond to the scammers' initial mass mailings (and therefore have to be brought along individually during the later stages) are the absolutely most gullible, ignorant, susceptible, suckers they can find.

http://www.quora.com/Scams/Why-are-email-scams-written-in-br...

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I thought that too, but it doesn't apply. This is malware. It doesn't need someone to be gullible beyond the click of the button. Scams, on the other hand, require actually convincing the mark to send money, which is why they need to be sure they have a gullible person on the hook.

But they do, most of these malware scams involve the user going to their website and buying their special malware removal tool.

Once you've actually infected a computer with malware it's a heck of a lot easier to convince the person to pay money to get rid of it.

It's their button, why would they need the user to click it? I guess it could be clickjacking, but there must be an easier way to do that.

>It's their button, why would they need the user to click it?

Because Javascript is allowed to do more, like show popup windows, if it happens in an onclick event of a button.

Related: "Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria?", http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/167719/WhyFromNigeria.pdf

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