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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

#201

Post by FridgeSeal »

Kalium wrote: post #172
phkahler wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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?

> How much do you pay for your email?

$50 year because I actually decided to put my money where my mouth is and actually pay for a service I use. I don’t regret it one bit.

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

#202

Post by howard941 »

On unmolested Android an app running in the background causes the o/s to display an un-closable icon in the notification bar, according to google so as to help users avoid getting into these background battery-draining situations. This doesn't absolve the app writer from deploying what's essentially badly-behaving fraudware.

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

#203

Post by FridgeSeal »

kartickv wrote: post #109
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…

Is there an ad network that doesn't use JS? You make a call to the ad network server, it returns an image, you display it in a native UIImageView (not a web view), and if the user taps it, you open a URL in a web view. Unless the user taps the ad, no JS or HTML is involved, which eliminates the possibility of such tricks. I looked for such a library a while back, but didn't find any.

Yes, you would think it would be that simple, but it’s definitely not.

Advertisers will give you double click (by google), atlas (Facebook), mediamind, etc tags m, to deliver as the ad. They will load in god knows what JS into their little space and (I cannot stress this enough), advertisers love their gimmicky little iteractable/expandable, engagement-filled ads.

To boot, they’re all laden with code to detect what publishers/sites/apps you’re displaying on, how much of the ad is viewable on screen and for how long, every scrap of code they can possibly fit in there to identify the user down to the finest grain they can manage.

You would think that things needn’t be this complex, but ad-tech companies have done a wonderful job of convincing advertisers that “targeted advertising is definitely better, and you definitely invest the extra cost in it, and definitely do all these other things because if you don’t then you’re totally falling behind your competitors, who are totally scraping every bit of data from their users, so you’d be a loser not to do the exact same thing and ~give all that dats to us.~ Sorry, make “valuable use” of all that data”.

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

#204

Post by manigandham »

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…

Adtech companies know exactly who is responsible. Every ad on any serious network is approved before going live. Every single auction is logged, that's just basic tracking and necessary for billing anyway.

The problem is that there are no serious consequences in this industry. Ad fraud isn't a technical problem, it's a business problem, one that most companies are not incentivized to solve or prevent.

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

#205

Post by Nextgrid »

krn wrote: post #196
vanderZwan wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's the only business model that works at their scale and for what their offer. Do you have any basis for that claim? Because my impression is that historically there have been and are plenty of other businesses at their scale that did/do not need this at all.

> historically there have been and are plenty of other businesses at their scale that did/do not need this at all. Have we ever had an internet company with over 1 billion active users not using advertising as its main source of income?

Microsoft? Major ISPs and wireless carriers? Basically any company that has a real product that people need can succeed without advertising.

Maybe the real answer is that Shitbook is just not worth paying for?

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

#206

Post by Nextgrid »

AngryData wrote: post #20

Advertising is a scourge upon society.

Advertising is like cancer. It starts small but eventually consumes the entire product/company. Seems like there is no "safe" amount of advertising, it becomes bigger and bigger and ends up swaying the entire company into doing unethical and anti-user things (like optimising for "engagement").

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

#207

Post by simonh »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #122
simonh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Mobile phones are hugely important economic enablers and poverty is bad for every kind of health, not just mental.

How many work/social hours are lost to mobiles.

I know for myself a huge amount are gained, or saved. Being able to check email, keep in touch on Teams and SMS, track my meetings, etc save me a handful of hours every week. They're some of the most valuable hours too.

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

#208

Post by MrMember »

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 happens all the time when a website serves malware through ads. The site will claim it isn't their fault, they aren't the ones serving the ads. And then they have the audacity to try and shame people for using adblockers.

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

#209

Post by easytiger »

hopler wrote: post #150
easytiger wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So no different than leering self interested political posturing masquerading as altruistic innocuity

There's a difference between consuming products that are funded by ads, where you can just it out of the product, and add that pollute public space.

Is a shop an advert ?

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

#210

Post by krn »

Nextgrid wrote: post #205
krn wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> historically there have been and are plenty of other businesses at their scale that did/do not need this at all. Have we ever had an internet company with over 1 billion active users not using advertising as its main source of income?

Microsoft? Major ISPs and wireless carriers? Basically any company that has a real product that people need can succeed without advertising. Maybe the real answer is that Shitbook is just not worth paying for?

> Microsoft? Major ISPs and wireless carriers?

These are physical businesses, not internet companies.

Bing has ads. Twitter has ads. Reddit has ads.

Yahoo! has had ads since 1990s.

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