That's what I call targeted advertising

Occasionally, maybe once a week, my wife forwards me a story about something involving computer security. She likes to keep up with the issues, mostly because I talk about this stuff a lot.

Today, she sent me The Growing Threat of Cybercrime hosted at Capitol Hill Blue (click that link if you love popup ads!). The story is mostly about the fact that your more significant Internet crime is quiet and secretive.

The criminals use programs that insert themselves into people's computers, then search for sensitive financial data or do other tasks like recording keystrokes as computer users log on to their personal accounts.

What's being talked about here is spyware, and the article seems pretty much standarad fare, with the message, "Don't install stuff."

The funny part of the story, though, is that the banner ads on the right side of the article are, themselves, advertising for spyware. I count at least two being offered. I don't know their real names (I'm too lazy to look them up at Sunbelt), but they're the "Get All the Smiley Faces You'll Ever Want" one and the "Warning Your Computer is Already Infected" one.

Oh, and there's a popup generator in there I can't figure out -- I use Firefox's standard popup blocker and FlashBlock (which is awesome), yet I still manage to get it. I think there's a window.onFocus() event handler in there somewhere.