OPINION
If you think it’s a clever idea to send out a malware bot as a major recruitment campaign and still barely manage to suck in more than a couple of thousand confused Boomers, you just might be a “youth climate activist”.
The “clever” online campaign was the brainchild of the “Australian Youth Climate Coalition” — who are about as youthful as a middle-aged porn actress putting her hair in pigtails and claiming to be a “teen”. Although at least the porn actress is making an honest living.
A youth climate change protest group has devised a strategy to manipulate algorithms to trick older Australians into receiving positive climate action stories and videos on their social media.
The campaign involves sending users a link to a website which at first appears to be an innocent instant cookie recipe but will, if a user clicks on the link, manipulate the content displayed to the user across the internet, forcing supportive green climate videos and articles into their feeds.
If that sounds like malware to you, then that’s because it’s exactly what it is.
The move has divided researchers and internet ethicists who say if cyber criminals or state actors were to pursue a similar campaign it would unequivocally be considered malicious software, known as malware.
While cookies are used widely on the internet, in most cases they are being used to track user behaviour to sell products, not change their world or political views.
In other words, it’s the political equivalent of an email from a Nigerian prince.
Like all criminals, the climate con artists think their ends justify their dodgy means.
Grace Vegesana, AYCC’s director of climate & racial Justice, told The Australian that for young Australians, “climate change was the biggest fight of our lives – so we aren’t afraid to get creative in how we take action”.
“Ultimately, we’re taking action to create a fair and just world, with a stable climate and healthy environment for our communities and future generations – and don’t mind being a bit cheeky in the process,” she said.
There’s “cheeky” and then there’s lying and cheating.
Cyber security firms have raised concerned about the campaign, with online threat intelligence company Check Point Research, which had a team investigate AYCC’s URL and the cookie manipulation technology.
“This method is kind of ‘grey’ … (it’s) difficult to tell whether it is fully legitimate or not from a legal perspective, but as it is doing some changes on your PC without your clear consent to what it is doing, I’d tend to say it is ‘fishy’ approach,” the team found.
The company’s tech evangelist Ashwin Ram, one of Australia’s top 100 Innovators, said the technique was not common but was something he imagined cyber criminals would use as part of phishing campaigns.
“While this may look innocent, any narrative could be pushed in this subtle way without the knowledge of the end user,” he said.
In a more honest time, we’d just come right out and call it a scam.
Mr Ram said cookies were used to “enhance the user experience”, but in the case of AYCC campaign, “it looks like the goal here was to lure sceptics of climate change to oneminutecookie.com”. He adds: “While the site looks innocent, a victim’s browser will store cookies that will affect their browsing experience by displaying content to support a particular narrative.”
Do we get to call this “dangerous misinformation”? A “climate dark web”?
The Australian Youth Climate Coalition has called on young Australians to send the link to friends and family members who are sceptical of climate change.
Yet even the obedient, mindless sheep which are climate-deranged teenagers weren’t buying into the scam.
The campaign has been live for over six weeks since August 10, but was briefly offline on Wednesday.
The URL has had a total of 2561 people visits from mobile web and desktop devices, according to analysis from Israeli intelligence and web monitoring service Similarweb. That figure has dropped to zero over the past four days.
The Australian
They can’t even pull off a scam properly.
This post will probably have a bigger reach than that.
These idiots shouldn’t just be ashamed — they should be embarrassed.