Export thread

I've been giving Chrome a tryout for the last couple weeks. I liked the speed and general performance of it. I installed the Chrome version of Adblock, and just gave it a pass on the ads loading for a split second then disappearing. Until now.

I was over at baseball-fever.com, a respected and reputable baseball forum. While I was reading one of the stadium threads, I got an alert from Avast! of a trojan. Jsrontexi. Further investigation shows this virus can infect your system just by loading the poisoned ad. You don't need to click on anything else to get infected. The ad is poisoned before it ever gets to the actual site you're surfing.

A little *more* reading reveals that Adblock for Chrome isn't really an ad blocker at all. It's merely an ad "hider". Chrome will still fetch the ad, then just not display it. That's apparently an issue with Chrome, not Adblock.

I'm already running AdblockPlus with Firefox, and I've finally added NoScript. Chrome is getting uninstalled shortly.

That's hilarious! Half the reason to use adblock is to avoid waiting stupid long lengths of time while the ad server gets to serving your request (in other words, pages load a whole lot more quickly if you don't get the ads).

Sounds like a double face palm to me.

When the guys from Scott Studios, which had just been bought by google a few months before, came to do our automation upgrades here at the radio station, they kept showing us new features of the software that sounded kinda neat but either didn't quite work correctly or got half-done and then abandoned or just never quite did exactly what you thought they should. He told me that the office term they had for such things was "Chromage."

I quit using Chrome too. I doubt they will ever let adblock or noscript in completely. It goes against their bread and butter, advertising.

On the Avast! forums there was word that the Ars Technica folks were screaming "thief!" at people who ran ad and script blockers while browsing their site. The Escapist was actually banning people on their forum for suggesting adblock to other users. After some bad publicity they backtracked on that, but laid the guilt on thick to accuse ad blockers of stealing content and taking their money away.

If that's gonna be their attitude while those same ads are trying to pump my computer full of malware and viruses, then they can go die painfully.

Ars Technica wasn't screaming thief. They were explaining where they are coming from when they say it is harmful to sites to block ads. Here's the actual article, and a quote "I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, or is immoral, or unethical, or makes someone the son of the devil."

It is the only way for them to make money. How well has it gone when sites offer an ad-less subscription? No one wants that. No one wants to pay for content on the internet, but they all scream about ads. If it's the only way to make money, you can't blame them for being a bit upset about it. I'm not saying people are in the wrong by blocking ads, but don't be upset when site operators start complaining about losing money unless you are willing to start opening up the pocket book for subscriptions. There really isn't an alternative right now.

Someone here put it magnificently : (paraphrased) if you want to run ads that don't infect my computer with adware, spyware, viruses and such or make me have seizures, or take control of what I'm trying to view then great! Otherwise, kindly fuck off!

Like I said, when you now have ads chock full of malware, the content providers can fuck off if they're gonna try to guilt me into unblocking ads. I have to look after my own interests first.

The alternative is for the content providers get on the asses of their ad providers to shore up *their* security. It doesn't matter where the virus ultimately came from, the end user is gonna see "I went to The Escapist and got hacked." It won't matter that the ad came from someone else, or that the malware came from someone else else.

Yeah, I used Chrome back in 2008 for a while, then I quit using it after I got a trojan as well. Never again, I vowed.

I never click on damn ads anyway so if they get charged pay per click my blocking an ad has no effect.

Do ads still pay per click?

Covar said:

I never click on damn ads anyway so if they get charged pay per click my blocking an ad has no effect.

Do ads still pay per click?

Click to expand...

You're not getting it. The problem is the ads are loaded with malware that doesn't care if you click or not. If your browser fetches the ad and your virus scanner doesn't catch the trojan, you're fucked.

THAT is the issue. In spite of the Adblock extension, Google Chrome will still fetch the poisoned ads. Firefox will not.

You don't want to block ads, fine. Just don't come crying to us when you get hit with the payload of one of those poisoned ads.

No, that was the point of the article. They get paid per load.

I know for a fact the damn google ads on my gaming blog pay me (or don't, really) per click.

I get paid per view AND per click. Of course, per click pays infinitely better than per view, but there it is.

And no, I don't care if you ad block.

---------- Post added at 02:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:16 PM ----------

Frankly I have no idea how Google does it's calculations and I can't post things here as it breaks the agreement.

But I have never been able to figure out how they do it.

Dave said:

Frankly I have no idea how Google does it's calculations and I can't post things here as it breaks the agreement.

But I have never been able to figure out how they do it.

Click to expand...

How they calculate your take from AdSense? Google will never tell you. It's just not in their interest. You may be able to ballpark it from the other end with an Adwords account, but it'd still be a guess. Everyone I've heard guestimates it at 70-80%

Add revenue is usually paid on a per click and a per view system. Clearly clicks get more payout, but how this is calculated is a massive mystery. No one really knows. More than likely it is a really really complicated system that deals with many many variables. All I know is I have never gotten a cent.

2 comments:

1) Adblock does remove revenue, however websites should be more responsible in who they allow to advertise

2) I have never gotten a single virus from using chrome. Its fucking fantastic. It repeatedly beats out firefox in speed benchmarks, and on top of that wiped the floor with all other browsers at the PWN2OWN 2010 convention (only browser to not get hacked on the first day, made it through the rest of the contest.) That said I still use firefox for the firebug plugin. Firefox is way more versatile, but in that versatility you slow it down and add exploits.

anyways, no.

It stopped being fucking fantastic when it fetched me a poisoned ad. They are out there, infecting adserver sites like the ones the New York Times and Washington Post use. You may not have "ever gotten a single virus using Chrome", but that's only by pure chance. Chrome is fetching ads that Firefox won't. It is only pure happenstance that the ad Chrome fetched for you wasn't poisoned. This time.

If I had been running a lesser virus scanner, I would have been infected just by having the page load. A page from a reputable site. I would have been infected due to a design flaw in Chrome. The poisoned ad should never have reached me, but it did. You keep using Chrome, the poisoned ad will eventually reach you. Adblock as implemented in Chrome is just fraking useless.

Not everyone is so paranoid as to run adblock and noscript. They should be. Without them I'd be dead in the water.

I love using noscripts and adblock. The main reason is that I have MANY users at work get infected by these poisoned ad and I have to clean them.

I know it takes away some money from Dave, but I don't want to risk having a random rogue poison ad infect my machine

And the sad thing is, people won't be saying they got infected by a poisoned ad, they'll be saying "halforums infected my computer".

(is there any way to keep Google from hitting on that phrase, because it certainly isn't so)

Firefox is still hands down the best browser.

Chazwozel said:

Firefox is still hands down the best browser.

Click to expand...

Says the shark wearing grillz.

Not an awe inspiring endorsement, but it is an endorsement of some sort...

(As full of helium as I am I doubt it counts either, but I must agree - overall firefox is the shiznit. But then the last time I _really_ evaluated chrome was quite some time ago...)

I tried it, and it was fun for a week or so. But then I went back to Firefox.

Well, your anectdotal evidence intrigues me, but every other thing I have ever read says that Chrome's sandboxing mode is the wave of the future for internet security, and I personally have never had a virus even get to my antivirus using Chrome (I have had chrome catch a number of them)

So, here's the score board:

Against Chrome

Anectodotal Evidence - 2


For Chrome

Anectodotal Evidence - 1

Grey Hat Community - 1

Where was the sandboxing when chrome let the virus through? The average user uses default settings. A recipe for disaster.

The threat is real. Dismiss as anecdotal all you like. Security experts don't believe in Chrome yet. Folks like Secunia downgrade it for being insecure compared to Firefox.

DarkAudit said:

Where was the sandboxing when chrome let the virus through? The average user uses default settings. A recipe for disaster.

The threat is real. Dismiss as anecdotal all you like. Security experts don't believe in Chrome yet. Folks like Secunia downgrade it for being insecure compared to Firefox.

Click to expand...

Sanboxing is inherent in Chrome as far as I can tell, its not something you turn off or on, like user account controls.

And to your link, yes, there are poisoned ads out there, I can't argue with that, but I don't see anything about chrome in there. My dismissal of anectdotal evidence wasn't arguing against the issues with poisoned ads, that's definitely real. It was arguing against your one experience with a poisoned ad being an argument about chrome's insecurity.

My argument about Chrome's insecurity is because the model it uses is to go ahead and fetch the ad. Even with Adblock installed, Chrome still fetches the ad, but just doesn't display it. That's a Chrome design issue..

Chrome will download poisoned ads, even with Adblock installed. Firefox and Adblock Plus will not. That's the long and short of it.