Internet Advertising - the legal virus no one cares to stop

Here's a challenge for you. Download any new web browser and without using an add block tool and go for a week without getting some embedded ad scam/virus. You cant do it. Your PC will get infected with phishing apps and those marketing popup things that make a zillion pages open up whenever you use your browser and lets not forget those home page hijackers.

I see this all the time with new internet users. They get a computer and within 3 months it's running slow as molasses due to all the stuff running, reading, writing to the hard drive, sending and receiving stuff over the internet - that they didn't know crept into the system through their browser.

Sure these folks have to learn how to use firewalls, anti-virus apps, ad blockers etc before they can get an handle on the problem. Most of the virus's are annoying more than they hurt but real troublesome virus's can get installed this way through these ads.

I know handicapped people ( physical not mental) and old people who just need to use the computer for facebook or youtube videos and aren't interested in learning all these tools - they might not get it or understand the need for such measures but my point is - the problem should not be as bad as it is.

It seems since most of these spammy pieces of code dont cause lots of damage and are related to marketing they are not looked at in the same way as hard virus's - they are tolerated for the sake of making money.

Why should the end user have to put up with this? There is so much talk over stopping internet problems like pirating why aren't they wanting to make this illegal and enforce it? It seems if it hurts the big companies oh no we cant have that, must get rid of it but if it just hurts the end user we have to deal with these problems ourselves.

So for these friends of mine, I have to clean the systems with a variety of tools then set up tools to protect them - and hope they use the tools. But what happens, they wanna use a new browser with no ad blocker or they dont understand that page they wanna view that asks them to install a plugin to view the page is going to put lots of crap on their machine. or they install a new app and forget to uncheck that check box that wants to install that phishing tool bar. 3 months later I have to clean the system all over again.

What about the ISP's that allow this stuff to get through to your computer? Do they share in the responsibility? Should they?

Don't we as consumers have a say? It's like going to a store and watching where you walk because of the banana peels all over the place - in real life, those peels wouldn't be there, so why are they allowed with internet sites?

I never hear of any legislation to combat this problem. How can we fix this for future generations?

The main problem is that the ISP's don't want to get involved in the problem of malware/crappy adverts as it would require a stupidly large team to keep on top of it and they just want to provide you with the conduit at a reasonable price per month and leave what is seen/not seen upto the person at the end of the line and hope they are competent to be able to filter out the crap

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


I don't even use an AV program any more, and I use browsers that have no ad-blocking.

I've not been infected with anything.

Not sure exactly what you're talking about, BHO's etc, I've only ever had if I've installed third party things that sneak them in silently.

Certainly nothing that constantly reads/writes my drives or spawns pages. Unless I click on an advert..

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


What bothers me is I will visit a website, then go to another site and the ad is tailored to what I was just viewing. Example, I will watch a trailer for a movie and the banner will be for that movie. I didn't notice it till I was on an odd site and the banner for the next site was the products that I was previously looking at.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


I have been an internet user and computer owner for years, I have learned my lesson, I run my computer clean, with little intrusion and pop up free, but it has cost me lost of money, research and a couple of headaches and computer crashes.

PEBKAC

That is all.

Originally posted by Djayed
reply to post by JohnPhoenix

 

What bothers me is I will visit a website, then go to another site and the ad is tailored to what I was just viewing. Example, I will watch a trailer for a movie and the banner will be for that movie. I didn't notice it till I was on an odd site and the banner for the next site was the products that I was previously looking at.

?? and?

That's the entire point of what they're doing. The websites are being paid to allow marketing and you're just dollars to them. That's how they track you across multiple websites, the advertiser will have cross domain tracking to keep track of what you 'like' on the net and then advertise it to you.

And that's still not the same as installing malware onto your PC that runs without your knowledge. It's simple cookies.

ATS works on the same principle. Their adverts are often tailored to someone's browsing habits. Not much we can do about it, google has it's tendrils in every single thing on this dinky little internet thing.

It's getting so that if you even try to block some of the tracking stuff, websites won't even load properly. Ghostery kills so many comment sections and videos on websites I simply want to look at once and never again, it's a PITA to pause it on them just to see the rubbish I opt to view at the time.

If you really want to see how much tracking you're being exposed to, if you use firefox, install a plugin called Firebug. Then open the Firebug console and click on NET. Then refresh the page you're on.

ATS should force most web browsers to explode with the amount of stuff going on that isn't ATS related lol.. Oo

reply to post by winofiend


I think what the OP is referring to here is what is commonly known as "shovelware". The end user in a click frenzy just zooms through an installer and doesn't pay the blindest bit of attention to what is being installed along side their chosen application. It is user ignorance plain and simple. They just can't be arsed to select the "Custom Installation" option and untick all the crapware.

I don't have this problem at all. I have a 6 month old Dell Precision M6700 with a Solid State drive... and it still runs as fast as the day I got it. I also only surf the web using Firefox with the following plugins:

1) NoScript
2) AdBlock Plus

and for Anti-virus I use Webroot.

I can count on one hand the number of virus I've had on all my computers combined over the years.

Couple of other things... DON'T ever install any browser tool bars (ie Bing, Google, Yahoo, etc). All they do is track you and for some reason, any computer I ever see with these installed, has pop up issues. Maybe it's just a coincidence.

I'm also not your average web surfer... I build it, so I know the tricks.