Perfect Example of what NOT to click on.

A few days ago we were discussing what not to click in an email or website and I thought I would show a good example.
Internet Explorer has a bar that can be shown at the bottom of every page that comes up called the "Status Bar" (shown with an address in it with the arrow in red)
Usually it can be shown in Explorer by Right clicking the Explorer header bars (^ up there :-)) and left clicking "Status Bar"

Notice that my cursor is sitting on an address that they want you to click for information about the subject of the website.
The problem here is that the address shown in the status bar at the bottom when I put my mouse over the link is NOT the address the link says you will be sent to. (they don't match) like most legit sites do.
The page my browser would go to if I clicked the link in the email actually shows as a bunch of senceless letters and numbers that don't even say anything recognizable.
And of course my very first clue that this could be a dangerous link to click is that the email came from some conspiricy group about 9-11.

This is common actually (that the link and address shown in the bar do not match)
For example, I could add a link to this post that says www.ebay.com but it could actually send you to www.sexyfarmanimals.biz

See the problem with that?
This is one of the ways you can get into something infective without ever intending to.
Noticing things like this can help you stay out of some pretty infective sites because it causes suspicion as to the legitimacy of the page it wants to send you to.
In case you all are wondering why they do this and fake you out intentionally, and why anyone would want to infect your system, the answer is MONEY, MONEY, MONEY.
That is what it is all about, and most infected machines will almost ALWAYS have something that pops up wanting you to buy it.

That status bar will also show you how much ad garbage loads on the page, when the page is loading.
While a page is loading you will notice that a TON of what loads on a page is advertizing crap from Google Adsense, Ads-us.com, and a ton of others.
This tells us that the Ad garbage that they built into that page is in most cases the entire reason some pages take a lot longer to load.
(AND that a lot of times the page is waiting for that ad crap to load before it loads the web page you wanted to go to)
MSN.com, Yahoo.com, Fox News.com for example, all have craploads of background stuff for tracking and advertizing loading that you never actally see but is there built into the code in the page all the same. (you don't see infections loading, but see the after effects)


In conclusion, this would be a link in an email that you should be highly suspicious of.
Anywho, just thought I would touch on this subject again with a visual example.