Does anybody actually download those 4,000 free smileys?

Factual Questions
1

I think I can safely assume we, as experienced websurfers, have all been barraged by those ads for “4,000 (or however many) FREE smileys.” They come in many forms. Pop-ups, sidebars, pop-unders, what have you, but they always feature a wide array of garish icons of the immortal “smiley face” engaging in a wide array of activities.

My question is… why? Who is downloading these things? What incentive could an advertiser possibly to be giving them away? What does one receive when–I’m too frightened to do it myself–these “smileys” are downloaded? It’s all so confusing.

2

I haven’t downloaded them myself, but at the worst you may get an installer that installs some spyware or virus on your computer. If you’re lucky, maybe it won’t do anything more than get your name and email address to sell to spammers.

TINSTAAFL. There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

3

Personally, I’m amazed at how many websites I’ve visited and just happened to be the millionth visitor.

4

My little brother did. Granted, he is 13, but you would really think he’d know better by now.

5

And??? Did the computer belch fire and die? What horrible thing came with the smileys?

6

I’m gloomily expecting some friend or family member to send me one of those smileys in an e-mail, complete with spy-ware.

And if it works that way, the Internet is doomed (again).

7

You can access the smiles here, spyware and adware free:

http://www.clicksmilies.com/

To use them, just right-click and save image as.

8

I admit to having a small smiley collection, so once when my mouse accidentally clicked the ad (no, really), I didn’t try to stop it.

Turns out the download won’t go through on Macs. Which reinforces the suspicion that it downloads spyware, 'cause if it was just image files it wouldn’t make any difference what platform it was downloading to.