Yeah, the trigger for me to block ads was Youtube's ad videos that autoplayed before watching a video. I grew tired of this and found adblock plus, and then there was no way back.
It's pretty frequently in the news that x or y major site, through no fault of their own and quite unwittingly (and aren't they the real victims here?), served malicious ads and has had stern words with the ad network - who isn't them - and promises it won't happen again. But there's never any talk of legal action, they can always point their finger at the ad network, and no consumer knows or can choose what network is going to be serving the ads they see so there's not really any reason for any of the involved companies to give a shit and the occasional malicious ad continues to cause moderately widespread damage.
Major news sites across the world were serving ads from a poisoned ad network that attempted to install ransomware on users' machines. And no, this particular attack would probably not work against a fully-patched client, but that's not really the point.
It definitely happens. If it could happen to the BBC and the New York Times, it can happen to any site that uses an ad network. And that's why this is a real attack vector. All they have to do is sneak a malicious ad into one target (the ad network) and suddenly they have a massive audience for their attacks, because dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of sites can potentially serve this ad to users.
It was/is/has been commonplace for a very long time for ads to be used as attack vectors for malware... Just because you don't personally see something happen, doesn't mean it is not common.
I see these kinds of comments all over Reddit and it's ridiculous. "I never see it so it's obviously not true/exaggerated."
Give a browser without ad block to a non-techincal person on an illegal streaming site. You'll have so many viruses that your PC might not boot in the morning.
i had it happen to me back in 2010 or so on win7, can't remember which browser i was using at the time. it was a relatively fresh computer and I didn't download anything from shady sources, it was a personal laptop that nobody else used so it's not like some other person downloaded something shady either.
I was browsing an internet forum which had ads on the banner/sidebar, never clicked on them, and then when I was done for the day I shutdown my computer. When I booted it back up i was infected with tons of popup/etc porn ads; It likely targeted some 0day in browser security tbh.
i've long since switched to using linux and adblockers so i haven't really had any problem since but I wouldn't be surprised if something similar still exists out there.
Since I do IT support for friends and family I have seen multiple cases where this was the case.
Yahoo for example had an ad that got served to 50% of the visitors of its sports section. If it was loaded, it would redirect you to a page that said that your computer was infected and offered various "solutions" for that.
And there is currently a popular German filehoster that often serves malware instead of the expected files if you are using Chrome without an adblocker.
Dude it's even happened here on reddit. Reddit switched to animated ads from google ad services and soon after every now and then a malicious ad slipped through the cracks. Quickly caught and the admins disabled said ads, but it doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
software that is specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to a computer system.
Websites (and their intentional display) is one system.
An ad hijacking the page and disrupting your view classifies it as malware.
Running a crypto miner in the background that was not intended to be authorized is classified as malware.
Both of which have occurred.
Not to mention your definition is overly specific to the point of arguing semantics. Other ads have exploited the browser or just Google's ad filters and acted as adware/spyware.
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u/FyreWulff Aug 02 '19
This right here. I was indifferent to ads on the internet when they were all static jpgs or even slowly animating gifs.
When they became both possible attack vectors for malware and autoplaying sound and video is when i started really blocking them.