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Wednesday 11 May 2016

Malvertising again

Perez Hilton website users got hit my malvertising twice last week.

I use uBlock Origin and Noscript. So am I bovvered? Yes. Because not everyone blocks ads. Yet.

But who is at fault here? Not Perez Hilton (whatever that is, and I don't plan to go there to find out). I lay the blame on the advertising middlemen. They accept ads from advertisers, and farm them out to web sites. That way the web site makes some money, and the advertiser gets some exposure.

But the middlemen should do more. They should check that the ads don't include malware, and if that means that they have to strip out all javascript from the adverts, then that's what they should do.

A chunk of the internet relies on advertising revenue. It's been said that ad blocking costs ad publishers $22 billion. Well, chaps, it's going to get a lot worse unless you take action.
And why should you take action?

Because users hear about ransomware, and they hear that it can be installed via malvertising, and they don't want to have to pay hundreds of dollars to ransom their data. And you've probably already lost the 200 million users that are blocking ads, but you'll lose a lot more unless you clean up your act.

And there's no sign that they even know that's possible.

1 comment:

  1. Not enough. I recommend Privacy Badger and Disconnect as well as uBlock *Origin*, Adblock Plus, Facebook disconnect and NoScript. Then frequent use of CCleaner and private browsing mode. And, if necessary, TOR and a VPN. I no longer visit most sites that insist on presenting ads (starting with Forbes.com which was the first popular site to install "malvertising").

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