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Google Finally Quashes Month-Old Malvertising Campaign

Posted by samzenpus on from the better-late-than-never dept.

jfruh writes Since the middle of December, visitors to sites that run Google AdSense ads have intermittently found themselves redirected to other sites featuring spammy offerings for anti-aging and brain-enhancing products. While webmasters who have managed to figure out which advertisers are responsible could quash the attacks on their AdSense consoles, only now has Google itself managed to track down the villains and ban them from the service.

3 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Don't do evil by thsths · · Score: 4, Interesting

    unless it is profitable.

    Google standards have certainly slipped. You would expect them to prevent this at all cost, and to have a system in place that prevents it from happening. But unfortunately the very opposite is happening: unruly ads are becoming more and more common, and Google doing very little to prevent it.

    1. Re:Don't do evil by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nooo, folks are getting upset because Google USED to be consumer centric and seemed to really care about its end users, but for the past few years (since around the time they launched G+ and started pushing for real names and tying everything to a single user) they have seemed to toss that out the window in favor of ever higher stock prices.

      I have to wonder if this is something that cannot be avoided as it seems every corp that reaches the top of the heap turns into an asshole. Its like they reach a certain point and their drive to innovate and be the best is replaced by a paranoid desire to hang onto what they have and crush competition, from MSFT's OEM contracts to Google's damned near word for word copies of those contracts when it comes to handset makers, its like they reach a point and the engineers are replaced by MBAs and they just turn into giant douchebags.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  2. Re:Not a priority by RogueyWon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It should be a priority - because if it isn't, it will start hitting revenue. I'd gone years without using adblocking software, on the grounds that I knew a lot of sites I liked depended on advertising income.

    When Yahoo! ads starting redirecting to ransomware-pushers a couple of months ago, I reversed my policy fast.