Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. Though they're apparently changing their policy sometime this month to require ads advertising downloads be that apps' "primary download source".
That's good to hear. As you can see if you follow the links above I've been ranting about this for a long time. Do you have a source for that information?
Google Says 5% of Visitors to Its Sites Have Ad Injectors Installed
131–140 of 156 posts
Re: Google Says 5% of Visitors to Its Sites Have Ad Injectors Installed
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is fundamentally Microsoft's fault. The shareware culture of Windows is insanely insecure these days. Any sane operating system should have a packet manager, with all the software you could want included, and nothing you don't.
Yeah it's Microsoft's fault for allowing third-party applications be be installed on their OS. You'd never see OSX or Linux letting people install software without going through a walled garden.
It isn't really a walled garden. It's just that pretty much everything is inside the garden and there is very little outside that that anyone would want.
Interestingly enough, the only commercial software that Linux people regularly install is it's own separate walled garden; Steam.
Re: Google Says 5% of Visitors to Its Sites Have Ad Injectors Installed
#133How is this not simple vandalism? Throw the people responsible in jail.
If they are outside the country, freeze their american bank accounts and the bank accounts of any business that advertises with these injected ads. Precedent: we already have laws that, for better or worse, require hardware stores to perform age checks when someone buy spray paint.
This isn't primarily a software problem. This is a problem because nobody is enforcing vandalism laws which encourages the adoption of "vandalism as a business model".
Re: Google Says 5% of Visitors to Its Sites Have Ad Injectors Installed
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the 30 second youtube ads that finally got me to install adblock again after 3 years without. Also the javascript late load "oops click" tricks they're pulling to scam advertisers now (google search, youtube, bing search - all use late load javascript to get misclicks).
> It's the 30 second youtube ads that finally got me to install adblock again after 3 years without. Same here. I couldn't be bothered to install AdBlock for many years, but the mandatory before-video ads were the straw that broke the camel's back for me. > Also the javascript late load "oops click" tricks they're pulling to scam advertisers now (google search, youtube, bing search - all use late load javascript to g…
I don't mind the 30 seconds ads (to be fair in my area very few video ads are unskippable on Youtube).
I consider these ads the price to pay for a free video website like Youtube. I could even consider paying to remove ads in Google products (or for something like Google Play Music Unlimited that also remove ads on Youtube now that it will be used for music as well).
I use uBlock though in order to remove the numerous popup/popunder ads on some websites. These are just a pain in the ass without any justification (and most of the time are tied to suspicious offers).
Re: Google Says 5% of Visitors to Its Sites Have Ad Injectors Installed
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly this. I still remember the times when if I needed to change something in an application, I could just write to its process memory directly. Those were fun times... What I want is to retain the ability to repurpose the software on my terms . To move data in and out of the software whether software's authors like it or not. It's becoming harder each day, as more and more tools move to the cloud and turn into ap…
I really hope not to see that day. So, how to avoid it and not be open to security issues like these? It used to be that you could get a lot of use out of a computer all by itself, nowadays that's changed and the trend to 'always on, always online' translates into having your machine potentially under attack 24/7. Being vigilant against enabling the war on general purpose computation is very good, it is the biggest t…
> I really hope not to see that day. So, how to avoid it and not be open to security issues like these?
I don't know. Part of the answer likely lies in determining who the "owner" actually is. I want to be the owner of my computer, but business interests go against it. For instance, MAFIAA doesn't want me to be the owner, because they want secure means to enforce DRM on me. Other businesses would also like to be the owners, because they can monetize me better this way.
> I don't think we have much to fear from the 'professionalization of programming', not if the kind of code I see on a daily basis is anything to go by ;)
Let's hope so, but I think it naturally follows from Trusted Computing - the technology will enable proffessionalization. Because right now, there isn't much you can do to prevent people from getting their hands on a compiler and using it.
> There have been numerous attempts at slapping a gateway on the ability to write software for the hardware that you already own, the only environment where this has taken hold is on mobile platforms, I sincerely hope that that is a development that we will sooner or later be able to revert.
I hope so, but I fear we won't - that at some point a company will finally figure out how to lease PCs to general population instead of selling them. You'll get a nice, cheap laptop, but it will be locked down, equipped with trusted computing hardware (the company will be the trusted actor, of course) and require to connect to the Internet every now and then to verify everything is ok. Basically, what happened to mobile, only worse. And people will buy into it if the price difference will be significant enough. Actually, I'm not sure what's stopping companies now from doing this.
> But in order to revert it you'd have to come up with a solution for the pandemonium that would ensue if everybody and their brother would use the likes of 'download.com' or some equivalent to install their software from. Maybe something along the lines of apt-get for phones would be a starting point.
Yup. Crap like this is a huge problem, but I'm not sure if it requires locking things down. You can go the Apple way and aggressively verify every piece of software you allow in your repository. This makes you the trusted authority, which carries risks like abuse of trust, but solves the problem without heavy sandboxing.
So far I see the issue of distributed vs. centralized as a tradeoff between secure but inefficient, and efficient but with serious failure modes. I wish there was a way to capture benefits of both while avoiding the risks.
Re: Google Says 5% of Visitors to Its Sites Have Ad Injectors Installed
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
It takes less than sixty seconds and requires nothing more than installing a browser extension.
The people who most need to do this don't know what a "browser" is, much less an "extension".
And are still paying for AOL as it's the only way to get on the internet.
Re: Google Says 5% of Visitors to Its Sites Have Ad Injectors Installed
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Linux model: you install software from repositories curated by people you trust - distribution maintainers. No viruses, no bundled adware, just simple no-bullshit software repositories. I have a hard time understanding why techies continue to put up with Windows and OSX.
Agreed, every time I clean or set up a Windows computer for someone I marvel at how poor the entire process is, and how little it has changed in the past 15 years. OSX still has very little adware attached to downloads, in my experience - plus there's the Mac App Store. It's pretty much just Windows users who endure that.
Setting up a windows 8 pc is wonderfully simple. Theres an option to reset to defaults, and the default driver discovery is quite good. Windows 8 has picked up display drivers, wifi drivers and pretty much everything else that I care about in every laptop and desktop pc I've tried. I haven't tried Linux recently (about two years ago) but when I did I had major headaches with a Broadcom wireless driver, and a Bluetooth chip, that both worked flawlessly on windows 8.
Installing "common" software is a doddle too, wth Ninite. You get Firefox, vlc, Dropbox, spotify, Skype (now in windows updates though) notepad++, up to date Java and .net run times, pdf reader etc etc. I set up the installer once about 3 years ago and the same one still works, with a one click update.
Re: Google Says 5% of Visitors to Its Sites Have Ad Injectors Installed
#138You can't trust anybody except for open source repositories. The easiest way to get such trash on your computer is installing software from a commercial vendor. Oracle is one major source of headache, if you aren't careful you'll find your 'java' install also gives you a severe case of malware/crapware. There are whole companies dedicated to this concept of piggy-backing junk.
Open source isn't some magical protection. Even with being a much smaller target, there have been malware on Linux repos. Example on Gentoo(ignore the over the top headline): http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-infection-proves-windows-... Not to mention that the repos themselves have been having security issues over the years.
Gentoo systems refused to accept the backdoored source code because the SHA1 hash no longer matched - that's how the backdoor was discovered in the first place.
Re: Google Says 5% of Visitors to Its Sites Have Ad Injectors Installed
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's the 30 second youtube ads that finally got me to install adblock again after 3 years without. Same here. I couldn't be bothered to install AdBlock for many years, but the mandatory before-video ads were the straw that broke the camel's back for me. > Also the javascript late load "oops click" tricks they're pulling to scam advertisers now (google search, youtube, bing search - all use late load javascript to g…
I don't mind the 30 seconds ads (to be fair in my area very few video ads are unskippable on Youtube). I consider these ads the price to pay for a free video website like Youtube. I could even consider paying to remove ads in Google products (or for something like Google Play Music Unlimited that also remove ads on Youtube now that it will be used for music as well). I use uBlock though in order to remove the numerou…
I do mind them, because the most common use I have for YouTube is background music and short clips. A song is usually 3-4 minutes long, which makes the ad 12-16% as long as the content. Clips are even shorter, and the very disruption of my state of mind is annoying.
Re: Google Says 5% of Visitors to Its Sites Have Ad Injectors Installed
#140I see ad injectors installed on all my friends and family computers.
I think people has developed some kind of ad-blindness.
I remember a friend using facebook and some crazy and animated ads were taking 80% of his screen, I asked him "doesn't this bother you?" , he says "meh".