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AdNauseam Browser Extension Quietly Clicks On Blocked Ads
New submitter stephenpeters writes The AdNauseam browser extension claims to click on each ad you have blocked with AdBlock in an attempt to obfuscate your browsing data. Officially launched mid November at the Digital Labour conference in New York, the authors hope this extension will register with advertisers as a protest against their pervasive monitoring of users online activities.
It will be interesting to see how automated ad click browser extensions will affect the online ad arms race. Especially as French publishers are currently planning to sue Eyeo GmbH, the publishers of Adblock. This might obfuscate the meaning of the clicks, but what if it just encourages the ad sellers to claim even higher click-through rates as a selling point?
I am all for poisoning that well. For those of us who use adblock it won't affect what we see and will cost the advertisers money as they will have to pay the site we visited for those clicks. So really no down side from my perspective.
Time to offend someone
I am not sure if on purpose or not but their website is a classic example why ads are bad and distracting. Their website is loaded with ads for their campaigns, social media buttons, links to the extensions and stuff. The entire design looks almost like a terrible online magazine, that derides their article just so you will see the ads. It may that it is a bold sarcastic statement or they are hypocrites.
I'm not so much concerned that companies create ads and that they're almost completely irrelevant to me. They only show ads for websites I've already went to or ordered from so they're meaningless. I'm more concerned that I can't click on ads for fear that they'll take me to malicious websites. Even companies you think you could "trust" sometimes have malicious code in them. Give me ads that aren't clickbate for viruses and are actually relevant and I'd click them.
...if the developers of this app are secretly associated with an AD provider in order to generate more revenue from the companies paying them for the ads.
It could be considered click fraud if you used it against your own website that you have advertising on.
But I do agree, if I was an advertiser, and this caught on, they could see a potential spike in clicks, and therefore a big jump in advertisement expenditures.
That might lead to drastically reduced payments per click for websites, or maybe the end of pay-per-click, or who knows what else?
If you were an advertiser you should reconsider using annoying adds.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
You gotta love the creativity the geek community comes up with time and time again. It is plainly obvious that you can't sue adblockers away, but it's fun to watch the battle unfold in front of us anyway. I'm grabbing my deck-chair and my popcorn just now. :-)
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I want to block this crap.
I want to block their cookies. I want to deny them the analytics or even know that I visited the page. I want the advertisers to piss off and die.
Sure, you can shit in their well and give them crufty data which is useless.
Or you can just block this crap outright, never see it at all, save your damned bandwidth, and leave the parasites out of the equation entirely.
So, Quantserve? Scorecard Research? Google Ad Services? All that crap which is embedded in every page you see? I'll take tools which prevent them from getting traffic from me or any information in the first place.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I don't see how it's fraud for a user to choose how to voluntarily use a service that they're not obligated to use, when there's no signed contract or even terribly binding agreement between the user and the entity from whom they're retrieving content. If the entity serving the content doesn't like what the user is doing, they're free to block the user.
Remember, these are the same people that complain when you fast-forward through commercials, and have tried to make legal arguments to prevent one from being able to do that.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
As a user, I've been pissed at advertisers for nearly two decades now.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Well, the reality is ... you as an advertiser don't get a vote what I do in my browser.
You want me to view and click ads? Well, you'll have to pay me. Paying some other guy to embed shit in his web pages which I'm "required" to view? Kind of bullshit, and not happening.
If you're not paying me, then you don't matter, and I don't owe you a damned thing.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
While I personally block _all_ online advertising (and tracking) via various means, I disagree that intentionally breaking per-click model is a good thing. If the AdNauseam gains adoption, it will likely trigger further escalation in tracking. Advertising pays for significant portion of online content, and vast majority of people have to deal with it. If substantial fraction of people are given tools to block and automate click-spoofing, then new and much more draconian ways to track will be developed.
You think flash cookies are bad? Wait until AdNauseam forces Google to cut anti-NN deal with telecoms in exchange of ISP-level in-stream identifier insertion.
I don't see anything here that suggests this will employ some form of AI to determine which ads would be annoying and only click on those.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I already paid to get on the internet. Comcast gets sixty bucks a month. In addition, I pay to host my own websites out of my own pocket. You aren't entitled to a revenue stream from your website. If the only way you can make money on the web is by pushing malware (which is what all third-party ads are) then you don't belong on the web and should GTFO.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
The website is pretty sparse on the details of what actually happens when this plugin is doing its thing. Unless it's all explained in that paper they posted (which I can't make any sense of, and I'm an IT professional).
Does this plugin simulate a click, or does it actually load the entire target page offscreen, and if so, is there any possibility for recursion here? Suppose there are banner ads on the page being "simul-clicked" on? Does the plugin proceed to them as well? How does this affect bandwidth? And what about security? What happens if that page wants to install the Ultra Monkeys Toolbar in my browser? Is it able to do that? Am I not able to decline or close the offending page before something bad happens because it's all happening offscreen?
Please, developer we've never heard of before, explain to us a bit more why we should trust this plugin. In ENGLISH.
I don't see anything here that suggests this will employ some form of AI to determine which ads would be annoying and only click on those.
Some people are annoyed by all advertising. But other people have the checkbox set to permit unobtrusive ads. Since this extension "clicks" on ads which have been blocked, that means that the unobtrusive ads won't be false-clicked.
I find pretty much all advertising obtrusive. It doesn't necessarily make me buy shit, but advertising does influence mood. Some say only if you are malleable, but I have this nagging suspicion that it's more than that. They say that if you don't yawn when other people yawn, you may be a psychopath. I don't know that not reacting to colors and motions in typical ways makes you a psychopath, but I do think it is related to a lack of presence and alertness. Being brought to a state of alert by motion is a feature, it's what helps permit you to not get run over by some distracted moron in a parking lot for example. But it also means that moving advertisements (for example) are particularly annoying. Advertisers also exploit known effects of color to get attention and influence mood — whether it induces a sale or not, it still affects you. Or, again, if it doesn't it's because you've built some sort of structure in your brain which deadens your sensation. Otherwise, you couldn't possibly watch Ow, My Balls with 8/9 of the screen dedicated to ads.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Agreed.
The basic idea here is that the http protocol doesn't mandate what to do with the information stored on a given URL. That is left to the user to decide. It is just information you use in any way you want. Removing the ads is just one application of this concept, rendering text for blind people is another possible application.
Protocols with DRM (Digital Rights Management or actuall Digital Restrictions Management) functionality try to mandate what you can do with information. They didn't work. But even if they would, http is not a DRM protocol (except for the newly introduced video extensions). If they want a DRM protocol, then let them try to push a new standard protocol and put their shit there. See if it sticks.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
One of the most popular browsers is controlled by an advertising company, I'm not sure how popular such an extension could become.
But yes, if we add lots more clicks that can never be converted to every page visit that will dilute the value of clicks. I think it's brilliant, but it is an arms race. And there is a better infrastructure for advertisers to use a cost per action model, I could imagine them all jumping over there if cost per click model is exploited.
Perhaps automatically ordering something with an invalid credit card number could make CPA less compelling, but that might be considered wire fraud. I'm not sure if it would be feasible to prosecute millions of people for thousands of spoofed orders, at least not feasible in criminal court (you can't do class action suits for crimes). Maybe the plugin author could be sued for damages in civil court though.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Adblock by default has the "acceptable ads" feature which is pretty much that. I personally uncheck this box on every customer because they allow Flash ads if they aren't annoying and with flash ads the #1 source of malware it is simply irresponsible to allow them but if you care to support advertisers (which I don't***) then this combined with AB should fulfill that goal.
*** Advertisers, you stupid greedy pieces of shit, you brought this on yourself and deserve your slow death as does anybody on the net who bases their business model around you. For nearly a decade the thought never even occurred to us to block ads because they were just text or JPG hyperlinks or if you really wanted to be fancy a small looping GIF. They were so small and unobtrusive they had a negligible effect on even the shittiest dialup and since they were first party they were actually relevant, a D&D site may have a link to buy miniatures, a site for musicians footpedals and strings. Everyone got along and things ran smoothly.
But then you stupid fucks listened to the MBAs, Master of Being Assholes, who said "Fuck this being nice man, we'll pop up and under, we'll bury the content, we'll slap screaming flash vids on every page so the stupid peasants will give us money just to STFU!". It was YOU that created the pop up/under/over, it was YOU that demanded Adobe turn what was a simple video player into a code running malware delivery system so you could make "punch the clown and win an iPod" style bullshit, it was YOU that added MBs worth of bullshit to every single page, it was YOU that caused pages that should have been one to become seven, it was YOU that made simple cookies into tracking dogs, it was YOU that made pages slow to a crawl as unsecured ads from a half a dozen sites became the norm, it was YOU that made ads the #1 attack vector by not giving a shit about anything but your bottom line, it was YOU that took a business model that worked for a decade and burnt it to the fucking ground with your feces flinging short term outlook, you worthless douchebags!
So as we, the Internet users, do everything in our power to slowly but surely starve you out and make your business model a thing of the past just remember, it didn't have to be this way, it was YOU that shit on everybody and because of this we won't shed a tear, not a single fuck will be given, as you cry and whine about how poor you're becoming. You brought this on yourself, you deserve what you get, you worthless greedy fucktards!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I work in marketing analytics and, specifically, in measuring the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns at a customer level. Straight up click tracking is dead and this will do nothing which is purports as organizations begin moving away from siloed measurement of IMP -> CLK within single channels at an aggregate level and instead go down to the very granular cross-channel customer-level attribution.
If you really want to avoid detection and behavior tracking, I highly suggest you entirely disable cookies entirely (yes, I realize this is not worth it at all), otherwise you will not have accomplished what you had hoped.
(1) Nonsense, people cheerfully pay for all manner of internet services. Spotify, Netflix, etc. etc. Even Google, the patron saint of spying on people to advertise effectively, has finally started the process of simply allowing people to give them money so they don't have to bother with ads.
(2) Yes. Because, despite the enormous amount of effort the advertising industry has made to try and stop people noticing: Advertising is not the only way to make money off a website. Adverts are a tired, unpopular, ineffective way of raising cash. Their only virtue is they're no effort at all to use, so the lazy and unimaginative webmasters turn to them time and time again.
So.. it has come to this
I don't mind simple ads. They are fine with me because I can look at them or not as I please. The ones that flash or jump onto my viewing area or otherwise intrude into what I am doing do annoy me greatly. To the point I hate the people that are selling the shit. It has caused me not to buy products that I might otherwise have bought. To be assaulted by this crap while trying to browse really infuriates me. I can't believe any fool actually buys shit from these people. I would love an extension that clicks these ads in the background. If everyone does it then it makes all their numbers bogus and eventually it could undermine the entire system.
If you put stuff on an URL, and then you make the URL public (and put it on search engines), you are agreeing with the http protocol. The contract is:
"At this URL you can find public and freely available data".
That's the way http works. There is no click through contract to get to an URL and the standard is made so data can be processed easily (there are content, presentation and behaviour separated parts, and each part is designed so it is easy to extract only a subset of it). So, again, clearly the intent of the http protocol design is: "At this URL you can find public and freely available data in a format easy to process so you can use any subset of the data any way you want".
Seen in this way, an advertiser has agreed with the http "contract" by publishing the data. It should be illegal than an advertisher tries to subvert the nature of the http protocol and force you to consume content in a way that further's his interests.
This is similar to what is happening with net neutrality. People trying to subvert the design to convert a protocol into something it is not so to achieve control in the ways the protocol is used, removing control from the actual users of the protocol. They should call it something different, like "filtered internet".
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
How about appending:
yourdamnad.com/?BLOCKEDBY=AdBlock (or whatever)
to the fake click. THEN get the word out that customers should ask for BLOCKEDBY ratios vs. actual clicks.
meh
Agreed.
The basic idea here is that the http protocol doesn't mandate what to do with the information stored on a given URL. That is left to the user to decide.
The thing about this point is that advertisers seem not to have understood this basic concept yet. I have no idea of the quality of the browser extension I linked to in TFA. However the idea that an extension could be used to automate the deliberate poisoning of advertisers collected user data seems to be a powerful one. In my view this is a logical next step in the user vs advertiser arms race.
Most likely lawsuits alleging false reporting of clicks for profit by the advertisers. It's like Facebook reporting false user base numbers due to the vast number of fake, duplicate or non-human accounts. Facebook is careful to provide those numbers now, because when money changes hands based on them they have to be right.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I had an ad company try to sell me an online ad space. So I asked the salesperson what the click-thru rate was for the other advertisers on the site and she said she didn't know. I said, "It's 2014. This is the kind of data you should have at your fingertips. It's not like a print-ad where you have no clue how many people really look at an ad."
But other people have the checkbox set to permit unobtrusive ads.
I don't, and everyone I set up doesn't either, and it isn't because I hate all Ads. It's because I hate Removing Adware and viruses.
All of the unobtrusive ad's I've seen from adblock plus contain some link to a malicious download. Don't believe me? do the VLC Test.
1) Turn on Unobtrusive ads
2) Go to Google (or Bing, or Yahoo, Or Ask, ETC.)
3) Search for "VLC Media Player" (As a side note, DuckDuckGo is the few Search engines that do this right, but still serves malicious ads once in awile. Use "Libreoffice" or "Openoffice" Instead of VLC for an example)
4) Click on the first link you see. If the first link you see is an ad, click on it.
5) Download the installer ***WARNING!! Do not run it unless you Enjoy Cleaning viruses for fun!***
6) Go to virustotal.com, and submit the file for analysis
7) Watch the detections go off the charts.
I get roughly 3-7 pc's a week in our shop infected by adware caused by malicious ads that would be otherwise considered unobtrusive. If ad firms would clean up their act, and refuse malicious content ads or obvious scams then I would be more receptive of turning it on. Until then They're no different than a trojan downloader to me.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Agree apart from Flash. It was originally a vector graphics animation platform. I liked Macromedia back in the day. Adobe are asswipes.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Ianal, but even the definition they put in their FAQ states that intent to harm the advertiser is click fraud. The do not track purpose seems like a thin veil over causing massive amounts of false clicks that harm their advertising revenue. We should certainly be able to block what gets served to our computers, but this add-on definitely crosses the line.
Adverts are a tired, unpopular, ineffective way of raising cash.
2 out of 3 ain't bad. I'll give you tired and unpopular, but hell no on ineffective. Sure it's not the only way, but it is an incredibly effective way.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Ianal, but even the definition they put in their FAQ states that intent to harm the advertiser is click fraud. The do not track purpose seems like a thin veil over causing massive amounts of false clicks that harm their advertising revenue. We should certainly be able to block what gets served to our computers, but this add-on definitely crosses the line.
That would make it civil disobedience and protest then. It would only be criminal fraud if the intention was for a competitor to gain an advantage, to demand payments for it to stop, or to extract more money from advertising agencies' clients, which AdNauseum doesn't do. It'll be interesting to see how this gets treated by the press who have a vested interest in online advertising.
1. No, it's not click fraud or anything resembling click fraud.
2. This thing only matters if it becomes very popular. Otherwise it's background noise.
3. If it does become popular, it will probably have some kind of detectable signature to it and will get filtered out.
Advertisers really won't give a fuck about this.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Automatically clicking on all of them means that the advertisers can't tell when a legitimate sucker clicks or when the program does. So click counts become worthless. Currently the ads work on some people and not on others, and they can tell which is which.
If you're in advertising or marketing, kill yourself.
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.
Years ago, I had a version of a webgame ad supported (you could pay to get rid of them and get non-game-modifying perks .. oh why was I against game modifying perks again .. ) and people cheating at the game weren't only damaging the game, they were also reducing the amount we were getting per thousand ads displayed and the value of the clicks.
One of the solution was not to display ads to players who would exhibit this behavior (false positive are much more costly when you ban a real user than simply not showing them ads) so yeah, this solution can work ( and people can do it manually by visiting ads that would pay based on the percentage of successful follow up and just leaving it waste it's time in another tab)
OK, point taken, but you're very much an edge case - I'd estimate the vast majority of people use web browsers for things other than exclusively for downloading VLC. I use mine - as an example - for reading the news, a certain amount of social networking (largely Twitter), discussions (like Slashdot - how did you get here BTW?), etc.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
but NoScript seems to block most of them anyway. I don't mind seeing a few ads, but I'm going to try to control what programs run on my machine.
A false representation of a matter of factâ"whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been disclosedâ"that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that the individual will act upon it to her or his legal injury.
This sure sounds like it very well could fall under that definition. The question is for (me at least, IANAJ) does an HTTP get represent a page view? Who agreed to that interpretation? Perhaps the advertizing firm and the site operator agreed those are equivalent but I never did. My guess is though the "by conduct" part is going to cover it. I mean in this case an individual has downloaded software specifically designed to disrupt statistics gathering that is know to be used for paying on ad views, and then your proceed to use said software. No part of the definition requires you to gain anything directly, only the other party to be injured so this may qualify as "defrauding the ad company" by you the user, without involving the site operator as a party.
I really don't know, but would/will stay away myself.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
So as we, the Internet users, do everything in our power to slowly but surely starve you out and make your business model a thing of the past just remember, it didn't have to be this way
There still is another way, there always has been. If browser extensions such as the one I linked to take off perhaps it will occur to advertisers that their reputation is important. Despite running AdBlock I still do see ads, just not the attention seeking disruptive ones. I really do want the sites I like to make money. Real time black hole lists forced those using email to advertise to think again. I expect this browser extension idea will make online advertisers rethink their approach. Eventually. In the mean time break out the popcorn for the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Doesn't sound like that much of an edge case to me. These things may only need to be downloaded once on a given machine, but I assume that almost everyone who does so, does so via a browser. This sounds quite plausible to me without the need for exaggerating about using the browser "exclusively" for this purpose.
Also, GP was giving this as an example, not as the one and only case in which malicious ads get through AdBlock.
And to appeal to your marketing instincts, I and many others here would gladly pay to see that.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Ads weren't the problem for me. But here are the problems
Wow. Got a little off your chest there, buddy? :-)
It's worth remembering in these discussions that "advertiser" includes basically every business and for that matter every open social group in the world. It includes the emergency plumber you call when your home is flooding at 2am. It includes the band your kid wants to go see for their birthday. It includes your grandmother's knitting club.
There is nothing inherently evil in these people advertising. Their ads provide a useful social function because other people do want to find them. Of course, they also fund various media, which presumably the viewers/listeners/browsers value or they wouldn't be those things.
What everyone hates is excessive/intrusive advertising, and on the Web also the specific problems of malware/spyware served by ad networks. Those guys can go take a running jump, but let's all try to remember that they represent only a small minority of "advertisers", and they always have (or the Web would have become unusable long ago).
So, how about we stop talking as if we're stupid and think everyone who advertises is some evil demon whose only purpose in life is to frustrate everyone who browses the Web. Nothing useful comes from all the "advertisers should go kill themselves" bull that people who I can only assume are twelve years old post every time this subject comes up.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Google is desperately searching for new products because they know what the rest of us are beginning to figure out: internet advertising is a paper tiger.
In theory, it leads to targeted ads reaching more people than ever before. In actuality, it advertises by demographic in the same way television does, and mostly repeats products you have shown interest in before whether you bought them or not.
Further, most of the sites showing advertising on their content are putting so many ads on the page that the effectiveness of any particular ad is radically diminished.
When this "dot-com bubble" (3.0) goes down, it's going to take the US economy with it, and through them, the world.
Futurist Traditionalism
def is_annoying(ad):
# Problem too trivial to need AI.
return ad is not None
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Some people simply can't afford to pay for their bandwidth usage themselves, though. Think of the communities that used to use BBSes and now have forum sites where they post pictures, videos, and massive amounts of text. The owners, presumably hobbyists (originally), just want to share information, not foot the bill for everyone else who has a similar interest.
Advertising has a place. Personally, I can ignore most non-intrusive ads and they really only bother me if the move around following my cursor, or blocking the real content, which is more a problem with site or particular ad design than advertisements in general. Other people have a lower tolerance.
Make no mistake, though, what you're suggesting is just elitism trying to keep "poor" people from using the internet for its intended purpose, sharing of information. I'm sure that's not your intent but that's the reality of what you just indicated in your post. "If you can't afford it without advertisements, you shouldn't use the internet" is basically what you just said.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
If the entity serving the content doesn't like what the user is doing, they're free to block the user.
If the entity serving the content does not refrain from allowing advertisers to annoy users then they are unlikely to have either users or revenue. I think that the key idea behind the browser extension I linked to in TFA is an interesting one. It could be used as a kind of RBL blocking the most unpopular advertising practices. In time advertisers might find this an important type of feedback when AB testing.
VLC is actually rare for me. I usually see people who tried to update their flash player. Because some site (or even OS) suggested them that their flash is out of date. The they googled "flash player" and clicked on the first link (a malicios ad). For a long time i wondered how my elderly relatives get infected - as i use an adblocker i had never seen those ads.
I'd at least wait for the user to execute a script on my landing page before counting click-through type payments.
That's the root cause, yes.
Annoying ads caused AdBlock to appear, and AdBlock simply takes a blanket approach and removes ALL ads, annoying or not.
As an user, I am lazy and don't manually enable non-annoying ads, although I wish I would. It's next-to-impossible, though.
I have no problem with ads in general, as long as they behave. But for fuck's sake, don't release ads with SOUND. Listening to grave or lento music while browsing a site only to be blasted by some retarded, badly sounding Jigle Bells tune inviting me to buy Christmas-themed toilet paper is... let's just say it makes me a bit upset.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Same here. Ads that escape AdBlock in some clever way or the shit I'm seeing on browsers without AdBlock are a guarantee to never buy that shit or never visit that website.
There's a particular website in my country featuring very aggressive ads, and I specifically blocked that domain on all my machines and all my browsers so that I would never visit it, even by mistake. That's the effect their ads had on me.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
No, no, sorry, it doesn't work that way.
If you use your browser for things other than downloading VLC, then you end up with a range of ads based upon those other things, and your attempt to download VLC is only one minor factor in the process Google et al use to determine which ads to show you.
So no, unless you exclusively use your browser for downloading VLC (or some other gamed search result) it is absolutely not the case that you will only ever see malicious ads.
I can prove this based upon my own experience, BTW. I have used by browser to download VLC, and I very, very, very, rarely see malicious ads. They're extremely uncommon.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
And how do you handle ads delivered via https?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
... or who knows what else?
Or how about an ad that has a button "I agree to upload my address book" ?
As with many "good" ideas, the big problems are often due to the unintended consequences and responses.
Read it again, it's right there in the first sentence of the summary:
The AdNauseam browser extension claims to click on each ad you have blocked with AdBlock
This software employs Artificial Intelligence to determine which ads would be annoying by recognizing that it doesn't take Artificial Intelligence to know that all ads are annoying. All ads are annoying, this clicks on all ads, therefore it clicks on all annoying ads.
"Advertisers, you stupid greedy pieces of shit, you brought this on yourself and deserve your slow death as does anybody on the net who bases their business model around you"
Shut down the thread, hairyfeet has made the only statement that needs to be made. Ads suck. Advertisers are to blame. If something is bad for advertisers then it is good for the world. If they complain, fuck them.
It would only be criminal fraud if the intention was for a competitor to gain an advantage, to demand payments for it to stop, or to extract more money from advertising agencies' clients ...
It might be illegal for merely trying to interfere with business between others (website and advertiser). Tortious interference.
"If the entity serving the content does not refrain from allowing advertisers to annoy users then they are unlikely to have either users or revenue."
This is a cute thing to write in a theory textbook, but it's demonstrably false because here in the real world we see that annoying sites are sometimes quite popular. It is simply false that low-quality products don't succeed in markets. It is simply false that harmful or undesirable products don't succeed in markets. The only way to argue otherwise is to employ circular reasoning: "it's high quality if people choose it, and people choose it because it's high quality".
I was about six years old when I received a t-shirt with a logo on it (a Nike swoosh, I think, or something similar). I don't know where it came from but somehow I had the maturity to ask whether I would get paid to advertise for that company.
I still feel the same way. If Tiger woods can get ten million dollars for wearing a Nike swoosh, then I can get paid ten dollars for wearing a Nike swoosh. Otherwise I'm not going to wear a logo unless I personally already love the logo for some reason.
Fuck you, advertisers. Fuck you.
And everybody else sees that as bullshit.
hopefully this takes on and forces advertisers and publishers to switch to cpa instead of the meaningless cpm/cpc models of the past. Then hopefully we'll all see fewer, more relevant, more expensive ads for stuff we actually want to buy.
This might obfuscate the meaning of the clicks, but what if it just encourages the ad sellers to claim even higher click-through rates as a selling point?
As someone who has worked at companies using ads, I can assure you that click-through rate is fully meaningless. Customer Lifetime Value per ad acquired user, or revenue per ad channel, or some similar meaningful metric will be used. Dead clicks will not give ad sellers any fuel for their cause.
The real vector for malicious ads these days is on mobile devices. I can't tell you how many websites I see that will automatically redirect you to a full-screen ad asking you to "PLEASE INSTALL OUR MOBILE APP". In most cases, their "mobile app" consists of launching the site's "mobile page" but with additional advertising and tracking cookies. In the worst cases, the ad is designed so that touching anywhere on it will attempt to install the app, except for a tiny red X in the corner that is very difficult to touch without zooming in (which in some cases can be interpreted by the browser as touching the ad).
Sure, this isn't malicious advertising in that it's trying to install a worm or virus without my consent, but it's still software that I don't want and have no intention of installing.
It'll be interesting to see how this gets treated by the press who have a vested interest in online advertising.
They'll ignore it the same way they ignore substantial reporting on anything that upsets their master, be it the guy who pays the bills or the government rulers in charge.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
The addon user did not give explicit permission to the advertising companies to do business with the website through himself. Websites generally don't even have EULA. If they then are prevented from doing this questionable business through non-consenting parties, that should be fine.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
It's not an edge case. The repackaging of free Windows applications with malware is commonplace. CutePDF has this too and many others.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
If popularity drove movie awards, Michael Bay would be a multi-time Oscar winner.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
But the example is flawed.
The very first links are to the official videolan site.
Further down the page, you have softonic.com, filehippo.com, downloadastro.com, win-install.com, 01net.com, safe-setup.com (if you believe that, well ...), keweek.com, etc. Download at your own risk.
Now, as for the whole topic of click fraud, it's been known for years that between 25% and 50% of all clicks are fraudulent ("you can make money surfing the net" pay-to-click scams, bots, competitors, etc). Knowledgeable advertisers have already baked in that number into their budgets.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Hosting is absurdly cheap though. I have a Dreamhost "unlimited" (for purposes of hosting a website, not being your personal backup, etc) plan that costs me less than $10/mo. The labor required to build and maintain a hobbyist site for a large community would be worth more than cost of hosting. So if you've got hobbyists who are enthusiastic enough to actually do the community-maintenance stuff to keep their online community running, gathering a measly 33 cents a day on average across all of them can't be that hard. If just one person in that community makes a decent enough living that a $10/mo donation to their favorite online community is trivial, then bam, hosting costs handled. Or ten fans who can each spare a buck a month?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Only ever seeing malicious ads is not the issue - ever seeing malicious ads is the issue. FYI, one malware is one malware too many.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Automatically clicking on all of them means that the advertisers can't tell when a legitimate sucker clicks or when the program does. So click counts become worthless. Currently the ads work on some people and not on others, and they can tell which is which.
Actually, savvy advertisers (or ad networks that manage the ad serving process) can easily tell by sending you to a page that requires you to do something (for example, a dialog with an offer to subscribe, which you will click on to get rid of and expose the underlying content). How do you think they've been dealing with bots for the last couple of decades?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Clicking ads you're not visiting is fraud. Really.
Sorry but following a HTTP link that's been presented to your browser is not fraud.
It may fall under various anti-denial of service or computer misuse laws, but I can't see how it's fraudulent. You were offered the chance to call a URL, you called it.
The fact that you chose not to render the response to your call on your screen is your choice. If the providers of the URL want to assume that you did then that's their own stupidity.
Why anybody would bother making content if that were the case everwhere, I dunno.
It worked quite well in the past.
For example, Fraud from bots represents a loss of $6 billion in digital advertising @Reuters says
I think getting "clicks" from actual targeted customers is a non-problem in the face of all this other fraud. When it comes to security research (my field), more information pretty much always leads to better verdicts. It's therefore quite reasonable that you want to crawl an extra step deep in order to vet a page you're on. This isn't even unprecedented; think of the browser link prefetching, which anticipates where you'll click and downloads content ahead of time.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Actually, been seeing a lot of ad popups saying to install either flash player or Java recently (hell, even "your machine is infected!! Call this scammer phone number to fix it!" ads have been popping up lately). These have been around forever and AdBlockPlus blocks almost all of them.
The search for "(Insert company here) Support" ads on search engines however adblock plus does nothing for unless you disable unobtrusive ads. I've had people call them and get hosed by some scammer cause their printer wasn't working and they searched for HP Support and got a scammer.
These ads are cases where the 4 Laws of Computer stupidity (See my Sig) are exploited to the fullest and why I block all ads anymore.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
That's assuming that it's accurate to call ad-supported sites useful, generally speaking.
5) Download the installer ***WARNING!! Do not run it unless you Enjoy Cleaning viruses for fun!***
6) Go to virustotal.com, and submit the file for analysis
7) Watch the detections go off the charts.
that's a good heads-up. I think this kind of test is something to consider the next time that Microsoft releases a OS version that prevents users from getting applications outside of the Windows Store. Last time they tried, the rage against RT was loud on Slashdot and elsewhere.
Thank you. And while I'm on my soapbox allow me to say I FUCKING HATE when people say "U should like teh ads, they infect teh puters and get u more work!"...imagine you built a lovely cabinet with your own two hands, everything just so, with the scrollwork in just the right places, sure there are plenty of other cabinets out there but you took pride in your work and made a really nice piece of furniture. Now imagine somebody comes by and buys your lovely cabinet and brings it back a few weeks later covered in shit and vomit and some of the scrollwork obviously beaten off with a hammer and offers to pay you to fix it...would this make you happy or would it piss you the fuck off that somebody vandalized your work?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It doesn't matter what you download. I wanted to get Chrome for my PC after a fresh install. IE/Bing led me to an infected version to download. I'm sure that Microsoft is just fine with people who install Chrome ending up with viruses, but I know who is really at fault and that is why I detest MS to the core. If it weren't for the games I wouldn't even use it. And even then, I refuse to give them money for their lock in.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
If this catches on and there are too many fake click, the conversion ratio - click to lead, will go down and hence cost per click will go down. So an advertiser would eventually pay for same amount for real clicks.
Sounds like we need more bots.
Yeah. I do see some cool monoprice/dx.com/etc ads at times, but generally they're more "X found one easy trick to do Y and Z hates him/her for it", or when you're downloading software, there are billion fricking ads with big green malware-installing download links of various types, etc etc.
Who are the people complaining, because frankly I'd love to see them sued for deceptive and/or possibly fraudulent marketing.
Actually, USPS does derive quite a bit of its revenue from "bulk rate" mail.
Does Windows (last time I checked still by far the #1 operating system in use) already have anything resembling a software repository?
That's going to be a million to one.
On top of that, I'm sure the majority of the already low number of direct clicks on ads, is made up of accidental clicks. I see ads all the time in apps on my phone; and really the only clicks they have from me are accidental. Which happens quite frequently (and is quite annoying in its own right as it disturbs whatever I'm doing - I know, I should look for an adblocker).
I don't know, but if you're considering using that OS, that's obviously something you'll need to find out first. If your preferences are anomalous (say, for example, you have objections to running malware) you might decide that the "#1 OS" isn't quite the right one for you.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Download at your own risk indeed. I was curious so I opened a VM with a fresh IE install (no Adblocking) and chose the download.com link for VLC.
Download.com is reputable enough anyway, right? Long history with cnet serving up shareware and all that?
http://i.imgur.com/l8n2ScB.png
WHICH OF THE DAMN DOWNLOAD BUTTONS OPENS ACTUALLY GETS ME VLC?!?!
Obviously I know, but my dad doesn't, and that's why I have no sympathy for online advertisers.
Download.com is reputable enough anyway, right?
You're a bit behind the times
Adware
Beginning in August 2011, download.com changed their own installer to add adware to the software that users wish to download.[3][4][5] Accusations have included the surreptitious installation of a trojan installer[6] and a browser hijacker.[7] In fact, CNET admits in their download FAQ that "a small number of security publishers have flagged the Installer as adware or a potentially unwanted application".[8]
In August 2011, Download.com introduced an installation manager called CNET TechTracker for delivering many of the software titles from its catalog.[9] The installation manager offers to install add-ons like browser toolbars and change default homepages before downloading the software the user wants. Users registered with Download.com can access files either with the Download.com installer or directly via "Download Direct Links".
In December 2011, Fyodor of insecure.org published his strong dislike[10] of the installation manager and concerns over the bundled software, causing many people to spread the post on social networks, and a few dozen media reports. The main problem is the confusion between Download.com-offered content[11][12] and software offered by original authors; the accusations included deception as well as copyright and trademark violation.[12] Spigot
CNet uses Spigot to monetize the traffic to download.com. According to Sean Murphy, a General Manager at CNet, "Spigot continues to be a great partner to Download.com, sharing our desire to balance customer experience with revenue." [13] Security Vulnerabilities in foistware
In 2014, The Register and US-CERT warned that via download.com's foistware, an "attacker may be able to download and execute arbitrary code"
And that's why you go to the first link, videolan.org. Download.com isn't exactly a reputable source any more, and their download pages will often trick people into installing all sorts of unwanted crap.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The extension will not install in SeaMonkey even though its core modules are the same as those used by Firefox.
Ha ha. Joke's on you. The USPS makes its living delivering junk mail.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/business/seeking-revenue-postal-service-plans-to-deliver-more-junk-mail.html
It does not matter for you as user, as you do not have a contract with the site owner or advertiser. The site owner is not allowed to do so on his ads, you are free to do whatever you like.
They'll ignore it the same way they ignore substantial reporting on anything that upsets their master, be it the guy who pays the bills or the government rulers in charge.
Sadly, more than likely true.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Technically that's not a gerund. It's a present participle and so functionally still a verb, which also takes an indirect object ("gerund"), making it even more of a verb. Try, "I am gerunding, destroyer of verbs." Or how about on a different track, "Meaningless verb concepts define saliently."?
Adblock by default has the "acceptable ads" feature which is pretty much that. I personally uncheck this box on every customer because they allow Flash ads if they aren't annoying and with flash ads the #1 source of malware it is simply irresponsible to allow them but if you care to support advertisers (which I don't***) then this combined with AB should fulfill that goal.
I handled it by simply not installing Flash--if there's something embedded in Flash that I want, I use VLC or MPC, and I have YouTube set to give me the HTML5 versions.
As far as I can, Flash is as much an infection vector as ads, regardless of if the Flash is an ad or not.
Though, really, what we need is somebody going after an ad company for their ads being used to distribute malware: as I recall, we actually do have laws already on the books which say that deliberately infecting a computer with malware is a crime. Simply holding the ad companies liable--as we may already be legally able to do--might well push the bottom line towards where they will be acceptably paranoid.