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No More Deceptive Download Buttons

googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com

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Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#131

Post by downandout »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #104
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also happens when one department is perceived as an "expense" like IT or R&D, and starts pushing against "revenue-generating" departments like sales. Of course, all components of a properly-functioning organization are revenue-generating. An idealized business in some respects would be people giving you money with no money being spent. Everyone knows that's not how the world works, but it's awfully hard to justify…

Didn't Oracle reveal recently (maybe I'm totally misremembering this) that Google receives a shitload of revenue via Android?

Yes. To date, Android has generated $31 billion in revenue and $22 billion in net profit.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-s-a...

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#132

Post by colanderman »

cm2187 wrote: post #129
whyleyc wrote: post #9

This is a joke right ? We run Adsense display ads on our site and have to spend significant time every day reviewing and blocking new ads which try to use these deceptive practices. Since Google clearly has the tech to detect this they should be implementing it at source on the advertisers (malvertisers). Instead they are pushing this down to the publishers and hitting them with penalties. It's a clever ploy in some…

Most websites seem not to care about the content they deliver to their visitors. When I visit xyz.com, it is xyz.com's job to ensure that it doesn't deliver to me malicious content. I have zero sympathy for xyz.com telling me that it's not their problem, they serve 3rd party ads and if these ads are malicious it's the fault of these advertisers not their.

Sure, this is fine, but Google seems to plan to block sites which show malicious ads served by Google's AdSense. That's idiotic.

This is the second case in a month of Google punishing web publishers for using Google products. (The previous case was Google punishing non-https search results, when in fact many of Google's own web publishing tools don't support https.)

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#133

Post by JoshTriplett »

onion2k wrote: post #53
whyleyc wrote: post #9

This is a joke right ? We run Adsense display ads on our site and have to spend significant time every day reviewing and blocking new ads which try to use these deceptive practices. Since Google clearly has the tech to detect this they should be implementing it at source on the advertisers (malvertisers). Instead they are pushing this down to the publishers and hitting them with penalties. It's a clever ploy in some…

Firstly, this will work on ad networks other than Google, so it''s more broad reaching than anything they could do just within AdSense. This is good. Secondly, and arguably more importantly, the way to stop these adverts is for them to cost the advertiser (in either money or time) without giving them the reward of revenue. If the ads stop working then people won't have a reason to make them. By stopping the ads in Ad…

It's a necessary but not sufficient step. They should also block all such ads within AdSense.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#134

Post by squeaky-clean »

torgoguys wrote: post #97

I'm surprised of the negativity towards this action, but I guess I shouldn't be. A lot of you are in a very different situation than me and this will affect you directly. However, warning people away from being potentially tricked by these deceptive ads is a very good thing. Tons of sites out there that turn a blind eye to such ads and that's bad. Yes, there will be some unfortunate pain for sites that responsibly at…

I feel like something needs to be done about these sort of ads, I'm happy the Chrome/SafeBrowsing teams are taking these steps. But it's so hypocritical, because most of the times I see these ads, it's from Google's network!

I'm not happy that they punish the publisher/webmaster with no accountability for the advertiser or ad network. I can use Google's AdSense on my website, and unless I continually make an effort to manually review ads, it's very likely it will begin display these sorts of ads. And then because AdSense doesn't care, Chrome will begin flagging my website as malicious to users?!?

I'm surprised they're not doing this as well as making an effort to purge these sorts of ads from AdSense. That way, I could feel comfortable that my users aren't being shown scummy ads, which would be a huge advantage over other ad networks. Now instead, running ads on a website will either become a liability, or an extra added effort to make sure I don't get screwed over by Google.

Also, while a noble goal, there's no details of how they detect and classify these ads. I've had an entire Domain flagged and blocked off by SafeBrowsing because a single page on a subdomain was displaying an ad (via DoubleClick) which linked to malware.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#135

Post by JoshTriplett »

fixermark wrote: post #127
criddell wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm semi-serious here, but if you noticed that you are serving ads that are harming your users, why would you continue to use ad-sense? Why not switch to a different ad network and let Google know why you switched?

Based on other comments in this thread: does such an ad network exist? If all your options are terrible, you might as well use the terrible option with the largest ROI, right?

> If all your options are terrible, you might as well use the terrible option with the largest ROI, right?

One of the options is "stop running ads". Why is a "site for public safety communications" running ads at all?

Public safety announcement: block all ads to make your browsing much safer. Use Adblock Plus (with so-called "acceptable ads" turned off) or uBlock Origin.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#136

Post by criddell »

fixermark wrote: post #127
criddell wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm semi-serious here, but if you noticed that you are serving ads that are harming your users, why would you continue to use ad-sense? Why not switch to a different ad network and let Google know why you switched?

Based on other comments in this thread: does such an ad network exist? If all your options are terrible, you might as well use the terrible option with the largest ROI, right?

I don't think I'd be comfortable doing that.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#138

Post by alkonaut »

clinta wrote: post #80
onion2k wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, this will work on ad networks other than Google, so it''s more broad reaching than anything they could do just within AdSense. This is good. Secondly, and arguably more importantly, the way to stop these adverts is for them to cost the advertiser (in either money or time) without giving them the reward of revenue. If the ads stop working then people won't have a reason to make them. By stopping the ads in Ad…

This does not make any sense. Advertisers paying per view do not get charged for a view if crome prevents the user from viewing the page. The good news here is we now have official admission by google that allowing adsense ads without filtering is dangerous. And those of us who do not have sophisticated techniques that can detect deceptive ads have no choice to but to block the entire network serving them, if we want…

Any blockning of "malverts" should arguably just emulate view so it costs the advertiser even more than the lost view. If Google don't want to do that themselves (which would be understandable) they could likely expose it in APIs so plugins like ad blockers can do it.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#139

Post by discreditable »

Karunamon wrote: post #99
joosters wrote: post #67

So safe browsing is now blocking pages where the adverts are "often not distinguishable from the rest of the page"? IMO that covers all of Google's search result pages. Most users don't seem to realise that the top results are paid advertising...

Here's a google SERP for "insurance": http://imgur.com/VUqwyPq Are you saying the bright "ad" lozenge next to the paid results isn't explicit enough? And anyways, users don't go out of their way to avoid clicking on ads unless the ads are utter crap. Google's whole business is to make the ads relevant to the search and the user, so who's to say the ad isn't actually a relevant result?

The lozenge is not enough. I had a user last week who googled " email" wanting to get to her email. Instead of clicking the official link a few results down she clicked on of the ad links at the top. This took her to a page which started beeping, playing a virus alert message, and creating JS popups telling her that her computer was infected and she needed to call the phone number on the screen.
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