
Taboola ($157mm VC funding) partners with malware; Akamai and Amazon complicit - momscomputer
I&#x27;m at my moms house for Mother&#x27;s Day weekend and cleaned her computer after she told me she was getting a lot of popups. One of the frequent popups was for a site called suchhappy.com which looks like a BuzzFeed&#x2F;viral content site. You can check out suchhappy.com and see that Taboola partners with them and has big ads showing at the top on the homepage and all over the place when you click into an article.<p>To see posts about suchhappy.com being malware, look at the below links. After following the instructions I was finally able to get rid of it.<p>* http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fix-exeerror.com&#x2F;how-do-i-remove-suchhappy-com-step-by-step-removal-guide&#x2F;<p>* http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.malwareremovalvideo.com&#x2F;fixed-how-can-i-stop-the-suchhappy-com-pop-up-removal-tips&#x2F;<p>* http:&#x2F;&#x2F;computervirusremovalfixer.blogspot.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;stop-suchhappycom-pop-up-guide-to.html<p>* http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bleepingcomputer.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;t&#x2F;574578&#x2F;suchhappy-redirect-virus-and-getprivate-shopper-7-pro-x64-firefox&#x2F;<p>* http:&#x2F;&#x2F;helpremovepopups.com&#x2F;get-rid-of-suchhappy-com-virus-permanently&#x2F;<p>When will VC funded companies stop using malware to grow? How can we, as investors, entrepreneurs, and techies, place pressure on these advertising companies to stop supporting malware? Akamai and Amazon are complicit because they are the CDN on a bunch of the links on the page. Additionally, there are companies called &quot;UDM Serve&quot; and &quot;RevContent&quot; with ads on the page.<p>What can we do?
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Eridrus
The ad ecosystem is a lot more complicated than you know.

It is not often trivial for suchhappy.com to know who is driving traffic to
them (they do source traffic, but how would you tell if it's malware or user
initiated? there are piles of legitimate looking fronts out there), let alone
people whose ads end up on suchhappy.com (who, for similar reasons may not
even know where there ads actually ran).

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pikzen
>Akamai and Amazon are complicit because they are the CDN on a bunch of the
links on the page.

Yeah, and google is an accomplice to thepiratebay for having links to them on
their search results.

CDNs do not review what content is served from their servers. Send them a
complaint and they will, maybe.

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nickphx
don't let your mom install toolbars? teach end users how to read and
understand dialog boxes instead of blindly clicking "OK!" ?

