Snopes Pushing Zango Adware

DaMan writes "Here's something that isn't an urban legend — Snopes, the popular urban legends reference site, has been pushing adware, for at least 6 months, to users via ads displayed on its Web site. No one seems to have called them on it until recently."

Comments

Obnoxious Advertising

[driftingwalrus]

Snopes has long had obnoxious levels of advertising. The site really isn't usable without AdBlock.

Misleading Summary

[setirw]

This summary is somewhat misleading, since the user actually has to click the banner to install the software. Contrary to what the summary implies, Snopes does not perform drive-by downloads on its users. By the logic of this summary, tons of online publishers "push adware," since those "Free Virus Scan" ads are pretty ubiquitous...

"there practically every time" - not for me

[Animaether]

"These two popups are there practically every time you visit Snopes (see for yourself)."

Well, I did. And I didn't get any popups. I'm on refresh #30 or so.

No, I don't run adblock.
No, firefox isn't telling me it blocked a popup either.

I also tried with IE6. Still nothing.

Is the author quite sure they're not just targeting -him-? Be it my some manner of IP -> location lookup, or via an old cookie he's got laying around, or whatever?
Either that, or Snopes already changed things. Woo conspiracy theorists rejoice.

Re:"there practically every time" - not for me

[Spy Hunter]

Snopes, like most other sites using popups, sets a cookie the first time you visit, so you only get the popup once per some amount of time (however long until the cookie expires). Also, these days sites get around popup blockers these days by raising the popups on a mouse click event, instead of when you first visit the page. Try clicking on an empty area of the page to generate the popup (after you have cleared your cookies).

I can confirm that they do use popups as I got one from them just yesterday. Actually what I got was a pop-under, masquerading as a Windows dialog box, which is even worse. Snopes' advertising has become quite obnoxious, but their content is still good so I grudgingly put up with it. Incidentally, if you hate popunders as much as I do, please vote for https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=369306 to kill them forever. (Don't add comments to the bug though, that's bad bugzilla etiquette)

So Block Fastclick

[nachoboy]

If you don't like the ads a particular ad-server gives you, make sure they're unwelcome on your network, regardless of the site hosting the ads. I make sure fastclick.net (and about 150 other unsavory domains) resolve only to 0.0.0.0 at my DNS server. If you don't run your own DNS, OpenDNS allows you to block specific domains as well.

Re:News?

[palegray.net]

The news part is the fact that it's actively being discussed on a site like Slashdot. Here's the note I just sent Snopes via their web contact form:

As you are probably already aware, Slashdot is running a story (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/29/0047236) about malware being served up from advertisements hosted on your site. This malware appears to be in the form of misleading popup ads for Zango (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zango | http://www.zango.com), which is a company with a long-standing track record of deceptive business practices (reference FTC settlement here: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/11/zango.shtm [which they have mostly failed to learn from]). These ads are being served by the Fastclick ad network, which is operated by ValueClick Media (http://www.valueclickmedia.com/). I strongly object to any site profiting from these sort of irresponsible ads, and would like to see prompt action on the part of Snopes to remedy this situation. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

They also disable text selection

[ThatsNotFunny]

Talk about a user-unfriendly feature! They use some very annoying javascript to disable the ability to select a portion of text. No idea why...

No urban legend, that's confirmed.

[palegray.net]

I get the same result. I thought I had sent my complaint (reference this post via their web form, but upon clicking back over to that tab I noticed the same error you got. So, to contact them about Zango's abusive business practices, I have to install Zango's abusive software to interact with their server, or it generates an error? Wow. Somebody's smoking some good stuff at Snopes. WHIOS has the following registry data for snopes.com:

Administrative Contact , Technical Contact :
Mikkelson, David
snopes@best.com
P.O. Box 684
Agoura Hills, CA 91376
US
Phone: (702) 988-4047
Fax: (818) 261-3054

The phone number appears to ring to offices at "best.com", who says their offices are presently closed and offer to take a message. Keying "best.com" into your browser will redirect to Verio. And round and round we go. I think I'll send a fax to the number listed in WHOIS.

Re:I hear...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I read that comic too a few weeks ago, and did some research to try and verify it, but couldn't find any significant evidence. I think humor is not your forte.

The joke is about Symantec and all of the other anti-virus/mal-ware companies. The urban legend is that they are in cahoots with the virus writers in order to keep their anti-virus business in business.

I think it is at least as true as the FBI looking the other way when their informants commit 'petty' crimes because they think that getting the big fish is worth it.

Re:The downside of adblockplus.

[rjstanford]

I once emailed a funny video clip on a website to my wife - it had a mildly risque title, but wasn't NSFW at all, so I even mentioned that in the email. Little did I know that the clip was literally bracketed with loud, auto-playing flash-based porn ads (seriously). She was, to put it mildly, unthrilled.

And no, I don't know the URL any more.

Re:Adblock Plus

[mclaincausey]

I recommend using Adblock Plus and NoScript. You can also add a modified hosts file, though I find between ABP and NoScript, I no longer use the latter.

NoScript requires you to explicitly enable sites to run scripts, either per session or permanently. This turns people off, but security is never easy and it's just two clicks.

Re:adblock

[tubapro12]

If one reads their site information page they will find that Snopes claims that they intend to handle any claims of such ads.

We do our best to ensure the advertisements we carry on our site are as inoffensive as possible, and we try to filter out ads that flash bright colors, play (non-user-initiated) sounds, spawn multiple windows, automatically trigger downloads, install malware, or misleadingly claim readers have won contests or have been awarded free merchandise. Unfortunately, with several hundred different advertisers rotating through our site on a daily basis, we don't have the chance to preview and continually check every advertisement appearing on our site, so sometimes we're not aware we're carrying an objectionable ad until a reader points it out to us.

Frequently Asked Questions

Re:Does it run on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant to say:
All pardons to Cool Hand Luke:
"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

Re:It's not a Snopes Problem.

[stevo3232]

Word. Surely you mean "OpenOffice Writer", my home-dawg? Mah brotha from anotha mutha, you musta meant OpenOffice.org Writer. No trademark violatin' round here, fo' sho'.