What am I agreeing to on the net?

Factual Questions
1

Every once in a while I stumble upon a vicious set of web pages. I think we’ve all encountered them before, either searching for mp3s or when trying to write a report on some otherwise innocuous subject such as ‘beaver populations’. Click on a link and bangaty-bang-pop-wizzzzzz…. seven pages open up offering everything from ice-turtle schtuping to herbal car insurance. Some are nice enough to get rid of that pesky task bar and close boxes for me (thank you, CTL-W). Some use pop up boxes to ask me questions such as: “Would you like to make TeenageHousewares.com your home page?” Some ask if I am truly over 18 and agree not to be offended by TaxidermyCam’s content. Both typically have yes / no buttons. This is the point of my question. How accurate / standard are these buttons? What can these buttons do? Could the words I see say one thing yet the action of the button do another? Is there any limit as to what a browser can do to my system (other than change my homepage to something embarrassing) ? These pesky boxes have come up in IE and Netscape, so I think this question can apply to both.

Thanks,

Rhythmdvl

2

As far as whether the buttons, etc. are labeled honestly, there’s absolutely nothing enforcing that; it’s all under the control of the programmer.

In theory, there is a limit to what java, javascript, activex, etc. are allowed to do, but Netscape and IE are both notorious for having lots of security-related bugs, and many of these vulnerabilities allow web apps to do more than they’re supposed to.

The threat of lawsuits and/or criminal investigation is probably the main thing keeping those disreputable web sites from totally raping your computer.