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

Post by rchaud » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 3:56 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #105

TeMPOraL wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point I'm trying to get across is that something can be critical to a functioning system even if on its own it doesn't look very impressive. Voters are the scourge of every democracy, they push for all sorts of stupid policies and usually get them. I'd love if you could expand how this applies to advertising. Voters are critical to democracy. Advertising isn't critical to society, it's mostly a way for a lot of…

Imagine if literally the only way to get a phone, or even find out what phones there are, was through a carrier store. Take away advertising and the only way someone could find out about a product is word of mouth, or walking into a shop. Functionally everything would originate in shops. That means looking at the available options would be very time consuming, involve a lot of travel and be dominated by very powerful…

Post by crankylinuxuser » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #204

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.

Post by shawnz » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

redwall_hp wrote: post #232

shawnz wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, capitalism enables personal ownership which creates an opportunity for charity. Which parallels how humans and other animals behave in general. They seek out personal possessions but also sometimes understand the value of sharing them.

Capitalism has nothing to do with personal possessions. It pertains to the personal holding of production.

Post by hutzlibu » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #211

hutzlibu wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, ok. You dislike brand advertising, that's reasonable. I don't know if it's viable to separate good brand advertise (our soda tastes good, our bags last forever) from the bad kind (use our product and get all the pretty woman). Some regulation over emotional tone (and, of course, false info) may be much more successful than focusing on brands vs. unitary products.

Post by manigandham » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #233

manigandham wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If companies are "people" in the legal sense, why isn't there a 'corporate death penalty' for utter gross violations that would get real humans locked in a case for decades? Is the CFAA only for fleshers? Why so?