Exploiting your readers stupidity

The Independent, like the Daily Mail, is a brilliant paper when ti comes to doing moral panic. OK, so they're often polar opposities, but they have quit a lot in common. The Indy does like its special campaigns about saving the world and saving us all in general from the nightmare of the future.

I say this mainly because I find myself wondering why, over the past few days, they have decided to start carrying pop-up ads of the variety designed to trick idiot computer users into click-thru? Below is the sort of rubbish that is right now being presented when you visit their website.

A pop-up designed to look like a Windows message alert with a Next and Cancel button. These sort of pop-ups continue to exist primarily because there are so many people out there that will click on them thinking they are genuine.

What I find odd is that a paper of such morally pious attitudes like the Independent would be carrying adverts designed to actively exploit the technically stupid amongst their readers.