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Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

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Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#171

Post by tyingq »

runn1ng wrote: post #163
alecb wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW the companies responsible for those ads are Taboola, Outbrain, and Revcontent. I posted one especially egregious example last week on r/adops: https://www.reddit.com/r/adops/comments/b0n57e/its_embarrass...

Huh, you are right. Those scummy links at Washington Post are all Outbrain. I was mistaken then (because they use BOTH Google and Outbrain)

Google often has scummy ads as well. Haven't checked recently, but the ads on http://getpaint.net are often designed to look like download buttons to download the popular paint application.

Scummy AdSense ads are harder to pin down, of course, because of the live bidding and personalization.

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#172

Post by Kalium »

phkahler wrote: post #169
hannob wrote: post #65

It is interesting how this article starts. A guy has an app which drains users batteries. But it's not his fault of course, because it's the ad company. Except the ad company says it's not their fault, because the ad came from some other company. This fingerpointing points to one of the core problems of the ad industry: They created a system where nobody knows who's responsible for anything, so malware and fraud has…

>> But this mode of thinking makes no sense. If you put ads in your app YOU are responsible. If you use an ad service from a shady company that outsources to other shady companies then you're still responsible. Then it comes back to the Play Store. They like having all those free apps. It makes users feel like their Andriod phone has whatever they need. Google needs to make apps searchable based on privacy settings.…

Have you ever tried to convince someone to pay for something they believe they can get for free? The number of people who will pay monthly for user-respecting basic fundamentals like email is shockingly small.

How much do you pay for your email?

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#173

Post by VirtualAirwaves »

alecb wrote: post #134
runn1ng wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, many supposedly legit websites (even large media companies) run these very scammy "man from YOUR LOCATION got rich in 20 days!" "one weird trick to get younger" ads that ultimately lead to some scam But if you ask them, it's not their fault, but the ad company (Google), which in turn will point to a different company, etc And in the end, people are scammed and Google gets a bit richer, but it's nobody's fault o…

FWIW the companies responsible for those ads are Taboola, Outbrain, and Revcontent. I posted one especially egregious example last week on r/adops: https://www.reddit.com/r/adops/comments/b0n57e/its_embarrass...

I clicked but I still don't know who's #1 on Hillary's list.

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#174

Post by [deleted] »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #156
shawnz wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Television commercials are fundamentally more coercive than radio commercials, so should we all transition back to radio just to avoid those small additional coercive factors? No, of course not, there are benefits to television that are more important than those factors.

No, we should regulate advertising strongly enough to remove most of the coercion. In all mediums. When what's left is overwhelmingly truthful and simply informative, the balance and magnitude of punishment and fines are about right.

[deleted]

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#175

Post by hutzlibu »

marcosdumay wrote: post #168
snarfy wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not against advertising, but I am against branding. The term was borrowed from the cattle industry, where a hot piece of metal scars the cattle with a logo of the owner. Branding in advertising is meant to scar your brain. I consider it a form of assault.

You mean those laws that allows companies to get a reputation with their clients without a scammer being able to legally exploit it and confuse everybody?

Branding is ok. What I think is not OK but totally normal, is branding combined with advertisement. The name of the brand combined with all the perfect, beautiful and fun things of the world, so your name associates the brand with all the nice things. That is lying to me and I hate that it is the norm.

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#176

Post by bregma »

afureta wrote: post #121
bluesign wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" secret embedded camera " I bought "child's toy" and sold you "child's today", you expect seller to check every toy if there is "secret camera" ?

Yeah, I expect the seller to know what they're selling.

caveat emptor

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#177

Post by jimmy1 »

hannob wrote: post #65

It is interesting how this article starts. A guy has an app which drains users batteries. But it's not his fault of course, because it's the ad company. Except the ad company says it's not their fault, because the ad came from some other company. This fingerpointing points to one of the core problems of the ad industry: They created a system where nobody knows who's responsible for anything, so malware and fraud has…

> This fingerpointing points to one of the core problems of the ad industry: They created a system where nobody knows who's responsible for anything,

This sounds like a lot of industries...

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#178

Post by hutzlibu »

shawnz wrote: post #146
pluma wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. Advertising is just a symptom of the root problem, capitalism. "Attention is currency in the marketplace of ideas" as they say. If everyone is supposed to vote with their dollar, you need to make them vote for you. The easiest way to do that is by fighting for your attention.

More like, capitalism is just a symptom of the root "problem" that humans are fundamentally self-interested

They are, but they are also also very social beings who sacrifice themself for others.

Also, culture matters.

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#179

Post by krn »

I don't mind Google or Facebook showing ads in their own products, because that's the only business model that works at their scale and for what their offer. Imagine the world, in which the access to the most advanced search engine or social network was only available to the people who can afford to pay for it.

But I don't support using ad networks in the products that are not big enough to sell them themselves. Firstly, because it makes those products completely dependent on third-parties for their own existence. And secondly, because these products often become proxies for third-party user tracking.

Just let me pay for your product, if I like it enough. Otherwise, I will just rely on Blokada[1] to protect me from your unwillingness to find a sustainable business model.

[1] https://blokada.org/

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#180

Post by jefftk »

perlgeek wrote: post #79
Reason077 wrote: post #66

Isn’t the real issue here a technical one with MoPub’s ad platform? How is it possible that a banner ad can open hidden off-screen views, and play video ads using a different (fraudulent) publisher ID? Can’t banners be sandboxed in order to prevent such activity, or at least detect it?

Or phrased another way, why does a banner need to be anything more than an image, possibly an animated image? Everything else screams of abuse and unnecessary tracking.

> why does a banner need to be anything more than an image?

Because of exactly situations like this! Say you're an advertiser and you make an image banner. You make a deal with an ad network to show your ad on some pages. Some site makes a deal with the same ad network to show ads on its pages. Your ad is on the publisher page, users are seeing it, everything is good.

Now a scummy publisher signs up with this ad network, and sets the ads to display underneath something else. If the ads are just simple images and nothing more, there isn't a way for the advertiser or the ad network to tell that they're being scammed.

(Disclosure: I work at Google on making ads declarative so they don't get to do this sort of thing. Speaking for myself and not the company.)

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