McDonald’s Recalls It’s MP3 Players

Posted on 10.17.06 in Music and there are 10 comments.

This is why I love my Mac and I hope Apple never dominates the market:

McDonalds Japan has launched a recall after discovering that MP3 players it offered as a prize were loaded with a particularly nasty strain of malware. Up to 10,000 people might have been exposed to the problem after claiming a Flash MP3 player pre-loaded with ten tunes and a variant of the QQpass spyware Trojan. Once connected to their Windows PC, the trojan downloaded usernames passwords and other personal information.

Read more.

The Comments:

Skip to comment form

What a strange article that was when I followed your link, Kat.

It refers to “punters”, which I guess is a British word for “gamblers” or “speculators” (though I don’t hear it used that way in the U.S.), and it also has this little gem of a sentence:

“McDonalds Japan has apologized for the cock-up and established a helpline designed to handle the recall of the infected MP3 players and send out uncontaminated music gizmos.”

It’s almost like reading an article written in a foreign language or something.

(Don’t you hate it when people comment on something, but don’t even mention the actual subject of discussion?)

Frankly, I just like it when people comment....

According to Wikipedia, a punter is:

In British English, a colloquialism for:
a customer of any business, the usage being primarily found in London and Essex.

The site was a UK based site. I originally read the article here, but it’s just a small snippet of news, so I linked to one of their sources....hence the UK site.

I might have to read more UK sites. It’s interesting seeing the colloquialisms.

I love Brit speak!  I always enjoy reading British lit for that very reason.

Amy,
What are some of your favorite novels? I’d like to get into a good book.

Of course, the more ironic news today comes from Apple, not McDonalds:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/17/apple-says-some-5-5g-ipods-shipped-with-windows-virus/

I love the quote that says basically that Apple is mad that PCs are not more hardy.  Talk about passing the buck!

Very interesting Dave. I think it’s interesting that they don’t use a manufacturer that uses their computers…

I don’t know the exact reason for the lack of viruses on Macs but I’ve often heard it’s mostly because of market share and hackers don’t bother with Mac since less than 5% of computer users have them. If that’s the case, then I don’t think it really has anything to do with “PC’s being more hardy.” But I suppose he’s just trying to stuff some marketing into the deal.

By the way, Dave, are you a PC user or a Mac user? Just curious.

Yeah, they always make digs at PCs and viruses in their marketing- look at those ‘I’m a Mac, I’m a PC’ commercials. 

I always thought the fact that they are based on a Unix kernel was part of the reasons for security, but even it’s not hackerproof completely.  The whole smaller market thing is probably true to some degree. 

Actually I read recently that some worm-writers were annoyed about Apple’s smugness in regards to security, so they wrote a worm that uses an exploit in the firmware of the AirPort drivers on Macbooks to gain control of a nearby Macbook and published the how-to at some hacker conference.

Here’s an article on that exploit. According to this article, the demonstrated vulnerability was using a 3rd party usb wifi card - not the built in Airport card. However, Apple soon after released an Airport update.

It sounds like it was a pretty controversial situation. I thought the article was very interesting.

Thanks for the interesting news, Dave. I didn’t realize that you’re a computer geek (that’s a complimentary term, by the way).

Yeah, I’m a computer geek alright, and not offended by the term in the slightest!  I actually own a software company, so I can accurately just say- that’s my job!

But of course, we know it’s more than just a job!

Share Your Comments:

Name:

Email:

URL (optional):

Smileys

Remember me.

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below:

My Twitter Posts