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Story: Anti-fraud service blacklists PC hardware

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Am I missing something here? Surely fraudsters will find a way to identify the code that has been put on their machine and remove it, and hence the 'black mark'. At worst, they could reformat their hard disk and reinstall everything; this approach certainly won't force anyone -- except the unusually stupid -- to obtain a new PC.

Another easy way to circumvent this would be to use a virtual machine (e.g. VMWare). To the outside world, deleting a virtual machine and creating a new one is the same as getting a new PC. In addition, by installing a number of virtual machines on the same real PC, fraudsters could make all their accounts appear to be on different PCs.

Someone please tell me they've thought of this.

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