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Unwanted Popups Boosting Web Traffic
Most of us have experienced popups used for advertising. Now, some adware companies and advertiser networks are using popups (mostly from programs that users did not want installed) to directly boost traffic numbers for their customer Web sites. Net rating and measurement companies try to detect and discount such inflated traffic numbers, with mixed success.
What are these "popups" of what you speak, please? /firefox
Your stock values may be infected with SPYWARE!
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
CenterNetworks reported this very early this morning...
Entrepreneur.com's traffic dropped by 5 million when they stopped their popunder campaign. Pretty sad...
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
or take what you paid for. I use Linux myself, but feel free to get a Mac and experience less of these spyware just the same. It is really pointless to use Windows, or rather to use Windows as a non Windows expert and then complain about such.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Read the summary again, it clearly says:
...meaning spyware, adware, viruses, trojans etc. It has nothing to do with your choice of browser.
mostly from programs that users did not want installed
But pray that not many users will follow your advice or you will get the attention of the spammers and the situation will be the same with your "perfectly secure OS". So enjoy your minority while you can.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
There's no honor amongst thieves. I just wish something more could be done to screw these companies that fund spammers and malware advertisers, like law enforcement doing its job or something. Is paying someone to do something illegal also illegal? For example, it's illegal to hire a hitman.
I myself am a Linux user. When I'm talking to someone about technology, in person, I inevitably shift the conversation towards F/OSS. But, am I the only geek getting just a little bit tired of reading these "you wouldn't have these problems if you just used Linux" posts? This is Slashdot. We know. I promise.
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
But pray that not many users will follow your advice or you will get the attention of the spammers and the situation will be the same with your "perfectly secure OS". So enjoy your minority while you can.
In order to cause a security breech, they need motivation _and_ opportunity. And I didn't see him or anyone else say "perfectly secure OS". I can only conclude, therefore, that you're either ignorant, or a troll.
What happens when one uses pop-blocker which kills the pop-up window? Is that a hit? I assume the pop-blocker kills the window before a connection is established to the target server?
--Ram
"So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak." --Sun Tzu, in The Art of War.
Of course saying that, I doubt very much that even if Linux had a user base as large as the one Microsoft currently enjoys that the problem would be of the same scale, primarily because as a Linux user, even as a totally novice user, you can get all of your software from direct from whoever provided the distribution you are using, and it becomes less likely that you would want to install some random screen saver or other application that you find on the web.
Moreover it is considerably harder if not impossible to have a browser install software without user intervention under Linux. Furthermore I have so far never seen, and would find it difficult to see how an application could be installed under Linux that is as persistent as it is under Windows.
So I guess what I am saying is that the argument that Linux would be as badly effected by Viruses, Spyware and Malware if it were as prevalent as windows is simply not true, as the two operating systems, from a user perspective are not very alike. Not to mention the fact that Linux IS more secure, not just because of its relative obscurity but also because of the security measures in place within the OS. None of which will protect the OS if the user really wants to hose his or her machine. It does make that hosing more diffucult, and considerably reduces if not eliminates the threats posed by automated attacks similar to those seen agains Windows machines.
Yes, there's a large assumption by a bunch of people that Linux (or Mac OS X or FreeBSD or NetBSD) is 'perfectly secure', and yes, I agree with you that they are dead flat wrong.
However, there's a large assumption by a bunch of people that if Linux were more popular, we'd see a lot more spyware, trojans, and viruses (oh my!) for Linux.
While this is a true in a relative way, it doesn't take much to be 'a lot more' for Linux. Even with just half a dozen, you'd have 'a lot more'.
However, it's important to note that no matter the popularity of Linux, there is no way it would ever have the depth or prervasiveness of malware problems present on the Windows platform. If anyone who actually knows anything about the operating system architecture and security of both the Linux and Windows platforms in depth wants to debate this point with me seriously, I welcome them. Assuming that spammers would have just as much luck with Linux or ther UNIXes as with Windows is just sheer lunacy.
My blog
I'm using an older Mozilla version and haven't gotten around to upgrading to Firefox 2 yet, and my work PC doesn't let me have the administrative privileges to add to the hosts file, so I occasionally see popups from Vonage or yieldmanager or a couple of Indian sites; I think they're probably using Javascript tricks to pop themselves up.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Wouldn't it be much smarter if these adware companies let their malware fetch the popup file (pretending to be any popular web browser) and not display it to the user? Most users would never notice the additional network traffic and, not having seen a sudden popup, would have little incentive to go hunting for the spyware.
Who said anything about perfectly secure?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
While paying for refered clicks props up some very useful services (Google, probably + various artful collections of 18+ girls), most organisations that advertise this way are not really adding value. The spyware companies are not adding value either, but are just feasting on greed.
I say let them all just get on with it and rip eachothers throats out.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You don't need popups to do this, just a hidden iframe. This is the way the web has worked for over a decade. WTF?
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
The current model for advertising costs is just wrong! The pricing structure needs to be one that doesn't inspire fraudulent activity. Print, radio and television advertisers cite circulation and ratings numbers. Web advertisers should cite some other "popularity" measure, but not necessarily one that inspires fraud. Google, for example, might be one such measure, but really, it should never be so precise as in number of hits. I think it should be something based essentially on the site's demographic and estimated audience as determined by some neutral third party. It'd be like the Neilson ratings in its own way. And let these third parties come up with their own trustworthy measurements and may the market gravitate to the best of those ratings companies.
In this way, we would lose a great deal of fraud on the web simply because there will be lost incentive to have it.
I'm surprised that it took this long for advertisers to figure out that popunders/popups increase traffic. Back around 2000 when I was working for dot-coms, the ad-revenue based groups lived and died by traffic ratings (unique page impressions, etc) like Jupiter Media Metrics. When popunders started to reach critical mass, x10.com was pushed from nowhere into the top 5 -- overnight. I'm sure it cost them a pretty penny, but the result was evident over 6 years ago.
Let's hope that advertisers take another 6 years to catch onto the next big thing.
-Turkey
One way to screw spammers would be for everyone to click on their links, then not buy anything. Spammers are paid by click-through counts. If companies start getting a lot of false click-throughs that they have to pay for, they'll soon either lower what they pay, or use other methods of bringing traffic to their sites. Lowered pay hurts the spammers when everyone then stops clicking through. The general concept is that if you can't ignore them, then bury them instead.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Or use the OS that works for your needs without making rash generalizations that make you sound like a pompous ass+. I use Windows on my desktops (I gave up on Ubuntu for my laptop, too many issues) and Linux on my four home servers. I use cygwin and/or remote sessions for the linux tools. And it's funny - I have never had a virus*, I have never had spyware, I have never been hacked. It's this amazing thing called "common sense"; it just so happens that Windows requires more of it than the other options do.**
+ I reserve the right to sound like a pompous ass myself.
*never had a virus that I did not deliberately install in a sandbox
** Is that last line a perfect setup for someone to quote and get a +5 funny, or what?
So are you implying that having pop ups invading ones OS is having their needs met? If not, then I don't see how you disagree as the tone of your post seems to imply. I also made the limitation of being a _non_ Windows expert. If things work that well for you in Windows, then you sir are a Windows expert. Again, I don't see how you contradict my points.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
If Jane Sixpack wants those bouncy smileys for her email, and the "official distribution channel" doesn't provide them, she will download them from a random website and install them, and if installing them requires the root password, then the root password it will get.
The typical Windows user knows not to open random email attachments and not to execute software downloaded from random websites, but the "need" for smileys and other flashy-flashies trumps any security education.
The problem is not the OS, it's the user. And I'd rather those users keep away from Linux.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Also, lets be fair, you're assuming, as am I, that you've never been hacked.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Would you 2.0 like to view my traffic statistics 2.0? I make 10 AJAX requests 2.0 per second when a visitor 2.0 is viewing a page on my site 2.0. It is perfectly legitimate 2.0, I assure you.
Go to nascarnet.com, popups galore. Or try http://kgbt4.com/
I think I've seen some of these as pop-behind and self-destruct (self-close) ads. You can see it pop-behind your main browser and by the time you go look to who it is to close them they are gone. I haven't got a good handle of which sites are doing them since I have pop-up blocker, no-script, ad-blocker but some have been able to by-pass these and pop-behind. Much like spam as the blockers are getting better the website authors are getting better to getting around them. But like any one who competes without rules you can do anything to make anything work your way. In the case of the websites they just stuff your browser with a bunch of pop-* and they get there hundred or more hits to there website even though you have went to there home page website once.
I personally find both NoScript and AdBlock work well in Firefox. Now, I'm not against ads, but if they persist in being NOISY, MOVING, obnoxious ads I don't just kill them, I kill the entire subsite that launces them.
Want ads? Then stop popping up and stop full motion video with sound.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Someone ought to do a media expose' and actually hire a spamming company to send out a campaign, and then measure what kind of response they actually get. Given the look of many of the campaigns out there (from looking at the subject lines captured by my spam filter), I can't imagine what kind of complete idiot would fall for any of them. Quite possibly, it's not those getting spammed who are being taken, but the people who contracting a spammer for a spamvertising campaign that are. If it turns out that in 1G spam mails the return rate is only 3 morons who actually clicked-through the darn things, and that information became public, the value of such a campaign might just drop considerably and the financial incentive would go away...
How ironic that this story appeared today.
Just last night, I was considering submitting a Ask Slashdot question on how other users deal with otherwise trustworthy sites that serve obtrusive popup/under ads. For example Merriam Webster's dictionary pages http://www.m-w.com/ which I was directed to following a link in a ./ post. But I figured....popups? So 2001. Why bother the friendly folks with such a ancient topic?
For those thinking I don't know how to manage my unwanted ad exposure, keep in mind I am running Firefox 2.0 with Pop-up blocking; typically a solid solution. The MW website, however, delivered 2 ads that broke past FF's utility. It left me with my old tactic: A good-old-fashioned "You just lost a customer" email. I have a text template to make the process quicker, so here's last nights email to the House of Definitions:
To Whom it may concern:
Please be advised that I will no longer be visiting your website nor advising it to my children or students. I visited your website today and was confronted with not one, but 2 popup ads on the definitions result page. One led me directly to http://www.vonage.com/startsavingnow/ and the other was a kmart ad served by tribalfusion. Bear in mind that I use the Mozilla Firefox browser with Popup blocking active, and your website contains malicious code that defeats the pop-up window feature.
The computer I use and the programs that I run belong to me, not to you. I have no issues with your Privacy Policy, and your cookie policy. I simply request that you communicate with your third-party providers to prevent them from displaying code on your website that hijacks your customer's browser in this manner. While you are not responsible for the advertising content in said ads, you are reponsible for the user experience when visiting your site. At the present, it is not an enjoyable experience for someone who does not wish to be deluged in advertising. In addition, by continuing to host code which overrides a core browser component makes your site a possible vector for virus/malware transmission, should either your server or the servers of one of your advertisers ever be compromised.
I realize that advertising income supports your website, and more importantly your bottom line. The days when your core business was selling hardback dictionaries are over, and business models change.
However, upon the visit to your page, I am confronted with 8 total ads; the two popup/popunder ads mentioned previously, one for Hostgator, 2 Google ads for a Scooby-Doo DVD, one large graphical ad for Qwest, and two tolerable text links to your affiliate partners. All I wanted was a definition...not a great deal on DSL service!
As before, I will no longer be visiting or recommending your website or your products. There are other sources for the information you provide. In order for me to return, simple changes in your advertising strategy are requested, including the removal of popup/popunder advertising.
Sincerely,
Terry Hall
We shall see what kind of response I get. The message has worked in the past with some smaller sites, including my local bank's website. Why they needed pop-ups for revenue, I'll never know.
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
I just went to the Vatican website, and I got a Pope-up!!!
Using meme theory to create a strategy for detecting click fraud -
http://www.realmeme.com/click
I was modifying my original Meme Miner to improve its prediction success and it stumbled upon anomalies which point to click fraud.
Imagine my surprise!
Adblock + NoScript = no popups
I don’t know everything about either operating system, but I’m running both of them. Everybody on the Windows side (including me) is running without Administrator access. Nobody can install software. No program can access the Internet without setting the firewall to allow that executable to have network access first. That can’t be done without Administrator access. Any program that made a change to the registry could only affect that particular user and whatever it would do would not include transmitting data over the Internet. Accessing e-mail addresses can’t happen without explicit permission from the user. Modifying installed software isn’t allowed at all. Modifying the system files is not allowed. So what pervasiveness is this?
You hit the nail on the head, but I don't have mod points today. Bravo.
Not entirely -- I never make assumptions like that. I do periodically monitor network traffic; and regularly monitor my windows systems specifically for anything untoward. To do that I check network usage, CPU usage -- including 'holes' in CPU usage where it reports as idle, but performance makes it obvious that something is running.
So while I suppose it's possible that I've been hacked (through a hardware firewall), I would classify the likelihood as 'extremely low'.
Fair enough. However, every now and then I heard of perfect experiences, while very regularly i see very poor experiences. So base my judgements based on the information I see regularly. I have Windows installed, and it seems to be free of viri and other malaware. However, I see the opposite very very often.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Fair enough.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Am i missing something ? Or isn't this news?
If you don't like my sig then don't read it.
The fact that you probably had to set all of that up specifically rather than it coming as standard is probably significant.
I really like the programs that block these popups because they can get out of hand. Most toolbars have this as an option.
http://www.mobile-content-news.info/
Internet Explorer 7 popup blocker works. If Flash and other add-ons bother you, you can click Tools -> Manage Add-ons -> Enable or Disable Add-ons.
DATABASE WOW WOW
As a fellow F/OSS enthusiast, I am also bored of the "you wouldn't have these problems if you just used Linux" posts around here.
To the Linux fanbois responsible: Why not point to a specific chunk of code, or whichever branch is responsible for whatever wonderful feature you are pointing out today? After all, isn't that what F/OSS is all about? I may not use Linux, but I do write code, and I'm always on the lookout for clever hacks and good security (it's a zen thing).
barack to the future?
Who said anything about perfectly secure?
Someone who misunderstands computers, and the wondeful dance known as the "developer-hacker-shuffle". Break the box, fix the box, break the box, fix the box...
And the beat goes on... (yadda dadda dee, yadda dadda doo)
barack to the future?
This is a good idea. Worst case, if it turns out that the click-through rates are high enough to justify the cost to the advertiser, it will still provide a good "refresher course" to all of the 14 and 84 year olds who are still learning the ins-and-outs of email.
barack to the future?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
100% agreed. For those that don't know, both of these are plugins for firefox that can be easily downloaded from the Firefox Extensions website:
NoScript: This is based on a white list, which means that until you specify that a site is safe, no scripts (including Javascript, Flash, VBScripts, ActiveX, anything embedded...) will run. A simple box sits in your browser letting you know if the site you are on is blocked, if only part of it is blocked (for instance the site itself is allowed, but advertising.com was blocked) or if the site was deemed safe by you. You can choose to allow or disallow sites, entire domains, subdomains, or temporarily allow any of the above. The default is to disallow, so unless you specify otherwise, all sites will be blocked from running scripts.
AdBlock: This is based off of a black list, which means that it doesn't block anything until you tell it to. This is nice though because it also allows you to use filters which can include wildcards. For instance, you can choose to block: "*advert*" which implies any image (including background images), script, flash object, frame, iframe, or even div tag that contains the phrase "advert" would not be rendered in your browser. This allows you to block individual images and though it can occasionally cause a page to look messy, it certainly unclutters the window from advertisements and is very easy to use.
The only gripes I have about both of these plugins for firefox is that for the average / beginning user, they might be a bit above their heads. They are very easy to use, but someone sitting down to get on the internet who goes to their favorite porn site, only to find that it won't load properly won't take the time to realize that it's NoScript preventing the site from operating, they generally will say "screw it" and open Internet Explorer anyway (because it WORKS in IE). For security purposes, I highly recommend teaching your entire family how to use a Firefox browser with these plugins (my own mother now uses this after only a few minutes of me sitting down with her to walk her through it!) as you will never run into a nasty ActiveX or javascript again!
Firefox: http://getfirefox.com/
Adblock: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/10/
NoScript: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/722/
Now /that/, I can't argue with...
Can't they just create any numbers they want? Why go to the trouble of faking the visitors if you can directly fake the numbers even more easily?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I just clicked on your m-w link above and there were no popups. Perhaps you have a spyware or virus issue?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock