Internet Users Beware of Searching for Free Online Episodes of ABC's V Season 2 May Lead to Adware

Fans of the ABC show 'V' who search online for Season 2 episodes are running into a different kind of drama – adware. Advertisers, hijackers, or online opportunists have taken advantage of ABC's decision to NOT provide 'V' full episodes for season 2 online.

ABC announced in January that, unlike most of its prime time programming, full episodes of 'V' Season 2 will not be shown on ABC.com or its streaming video partner Hulu.com. This decision has sent literally thousands of 'V' fans to search the Web for online streaming sites that had full season 2 episodes of the popular show. An insight on how popular season 2 compared to season 1 is its search volume on Google. According to Google Trends, the term "v season 2" is more popular than the term "v season 1".

Figure 1. - Search volume for terms "v season 1" and "v season 2". Source: google.com/trends

But what Internet users are finding instead are sites that promise videos of the hit show but offer an alien invasion of a digital kind – adware offerings masked as free online games, which can be used by illegal publishers.

Our analysis has found that at least 1 out of the top 10 search results for "V Season 2" listed a site that linked to free programs bundled with 'low risk' adware. When examining the next top 40 results, we found that at least 4 of them had some sort of suspicious pop-up that either offered a free online game and even a free iPad. "The adware guys are taking advantage of V's rabid fan base and the fact that ABC is not putting the shows online," says Alvin Estevez, CEO of Enigma Software and an avid "V" fan himself.

On interesting post found on TV.com's news page and submitted by "a user of the site, not from TV.com's editorial staff," as the disclaimer at the bottom of the post indicates, contains several links for streaming popular prime-time TV shows. If you clicked on the link to view the V Season 2 episode, it redirects the web browser to the blog site watch-v-season-2.blogspot.com, where there's a list of V episodes. When you click on one of V episode links, it takes you to a page that asks you to complete a survey in order to watch the video as shown in Figure 2 below. As suspected, the so-called surveys never allow you to watch any video as demonstrated in Figure 3 below. If clicked on, the links in the survey dialog window did not redirect to any survey web pages, instead it sends you through an endless loop of adware pop-ups or pages to download free online games. We tried our hardest to view a video from the blog site but all we received was a "Please Complete A Survey" message followed by a "Checking for completion" message shown in Figure 4, which basically has the status bar run in an endless loop and locks you out of clicking on any other parts of the open web page. Instead of getting a video of V Season 2, all you are able to do is close out your web browser window.

Figure 2. - Watch Video link found on the V Season 2 TV.com user submitted post.

Figure 3. - Pop-up survey waiting for completion but never offers video.

Figure 4. - Pop-up survey waiting for completion but never offers video.

Another website we ran across during a Google search query for 'V Season 2', hxxt:// watchvonlinestream.com/season-2.html, which was laced with adware if we chose to click on the "Watch HD" button. The average computer user seeking an online stream of V Season 2 would not be too suspicious of such a link since they're thinking that it would lead them to the actual video or videos of what they were looking for. Not only were we in for a treat, but we were greeted with yet all types of pop-ups, which was nothing more than adware. Lucky for us, the adware was not aggressive enough to install malicious files. The pop-ups were advertisements or links to free online games laced with adware such as one called "PlaySushi". To play the PlaySushi game for free, Internet users are asked to install a "PlaySushi TextLinks" program that shows intext ads on websites based on popular keywords. While the program may be easy to locate on 'Add or Remove Programs' Windows tool, it's considered adware by some security programs and Google search results for the term "remove PlaySushi" show Internet users having difficulty to get rid of it or ever been aware of even installing such a program. Figures 5 through 9 demonstrate what we saw when clicking the "Download" or "Watch HD" buttons.

Figure 5. - Watch Now button offering V Season 2 video.

Figure 6. - A message pops up that asks to complete a survey in order to watch V episode but there's only links to online games.

Figure 7. - Pop-up survey waiting for completion but never offers video.

Figure 8. - Pop-up survey redirected to 'PlaySushi' online game installation prompt.

Figure 9. - PlaySushi online game installation complete.

You will take notice to Figure 5 offering several buttons to either watch or download the 'V' Season 2 videos. We attempted to click on the "Download" and "Watch HD" buttons receiving the same disappointing results. The online survey dialog window never allows you to watch a video but instead leads you to all types of adware pop-ups. In other words, the survey dialog window continues to display a "Waiting for completion" message, Figure 7, denying access to any other areas of the web page. You can see this demonstrated in this video below that shows an example of attempting to watch an episode of 'V' Season 2.

People looking for hard-to-find music, movies, or TV shows online expose their computer to a degree of danger. Some free programs come bundled with a low risk type of adware, which is usually used for advertising purposes and poses no major threat to an Internet user; however, there are other free programs that are simply spyware in disguise and install without the user's knowledge. Because of the need for free online games, music/movie files or porn videos, Internet users are often not careful on the Web and follow poor online safety practices that can put them in a high risk of downloading malware.

How often do you download free software and receive more than you bargain for? Are you aware of what you're downloading and if its bundled with something else? Do you know the difference between adware and spyware?