So much information on mesothelioma on the internet. As is often the case, follow the trail of money to see what is really going on.

Just search for "mesothelioma scams" and you will come across some interesting sites.

There are two scams involved: firstly the medical and legal scam; followed by the online click-fraud scam.

A Reader's Digest article on the medical-legal scam quotes:

"Your Honor, there is something very wrong here," Mulholland said about the testimony. "This is a real courtroom. You are a real federal judge. But these lawsuits are simply not real."

The judge, who is also a trained nurse, agreed. In a June 2005 order, Judge Jack wrote: "These diagnoses were driven by neither health nor justice; they were manufactured for money. The record is not clear who originally devised this scheme, but it is clear that the lawyers, doctors and screening companies were all willing participants."

The huge potential legal fees have meant that the cost of advertising about mesothelioma - nearly always about legal rather than medical advice - is also very high. This has resulted in numerous websites springing up whose only aim is to generate clicks on such adverts.

You may think this is nothing to worry about, except that malware has been written to force unwitting users to such sites. The Register has an article that claims,"The KMeth worm, which targets Yahoo! Messenger users, directs infected users to a web site serving a barrage of Google AdSense advertisements related to mesothelioma. Financially-motivated malware writers apparently hope to cash on the ruse through shares in the resulting advertising commissions which we doubt will materialise."

Where once automated bots tried to simulate real clicks now new techniques target weak computers that become the agents that automatically go to a website and "click" a lucrative advert. If you accidentally find yourself on a website about mesothelioma then best to scan your PC for worms, viruses and general malware.

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