C'mon Afterdawn!

Could you elaborate a bit? What advert?

 

moved to correct forum as not a safety valve issue.

 

Only place I can imagine this problem coming from, is via AdSense. I've added 217.23.5.233 advertiser to our blocklist there, which would take care of the issue if it is really coming from AdSense. Only other ads we're running are from IDG, who only have a handful of advertisers - the likes of Cisco and HP.

Just to ensure we get this killed, let me know of what ads are showing on the site when this particular thingy pops up, as it might spark from a different banner entirely and AdSense only allows to block ads based on their originating address.

The issue seems to be quite widespread, I'm hearing users of other sites seeing this as well -- which _might_ also mean that it is some kinda Trojan that has infected your PC before and now pops this type of adverts.

 

Only way for me to find out what causes this is:

If this occurs again, take a screenshot or a note of _all_ the adverts that are showing on that particular page at that very time and post here. If I can get this info, I can track which advertiser is running this scam and block them. Without this info, I have nothing.

 

I've been trying to track this myself and so far haven't been able to reproduce the problem.

I loaded a number of pages across the sites through our US proxy using a variety of browsers from un-patched and unprotected IE6 to the latest Firefox 3.6, and no fake-AV popups have shown up.

Which exact page did you go to? The AD front page, forums or a different page altogether?

Getting to the bottom of this is our top priority. If nothing else, this goes to show that you always need to have your AV software up to date - no matter where you browse.

 

Could you provide some more details about the circumstances? I.e. what advertisements were visible on the page, which browser were you using etc.

Thanks,

Jari

 

Haven't noticed anything at all myself, don't run Adblock and use AfterDawn for a few hours each day. If it's Adsense then it should also be reported to Google as well as blocked from AfterDawn. If it's IDG... I think that'd be quite surprising.

To reply to KillerBug's original comment, as dRD pointed out, the advertisements are fed by external sources, Google and IDG already named. It reminds me of a rant on IRC about AfterDawn one day when someone accused aD of showing erotic ads. I asked for a link and it turned out that the ad in question was from Adsense (text ad) and the reason it was "erotic" (well... it wasn't actually erotic... just didn't belong on a tech site IMO...) was because the discussion on the forum thread was about similar stuff.

The point is, the ads reflect the content, and on the forum, the content is written by users, so AfterDawn with its staff of below 20 altogether trying to track every single advertisement is absolutely impossible when the ads are fed from Google's ten's of thousands of ads AND based on the content of the page itself. Whenever an objectionable ad is displayed and it's reported by a user, if its deemed necessary it can be blocked, but until the staff is aware of it, there's nothing can be done about it.

As far as I know, and if I'm wrong I'm sure dRD will correct me, AfterDawn doesn't handpick any advertisements on its English sites.

Hopefully in this case the blocked source will get rid of it and Google will purge it.

 

If the problem occurs again, could you (anyone reading) take screenshots of all the advertisements on the page (i.e the top and bottom portions of the page). You can email the pictures to me at <mynickname>@afterdawn.com or to support@afterdawn.com.

Edit: For reference, here's a discussion thread on Techarena.in regarding similar (or the same) advertisement.

http://forums.techarena.in/security-virus/1310563.htm

Most likely the advertisement originates from Adsense, since it is the only common denominator between the sites (wordtwist.org, gizmag.com and afterdawn.com). Looks like something slipped through Google's fingers.