

Google Profits from Malware - ScottBurson
http://www.donnafontenot.com/google-profits-from-malware/

======
ScottBurson
As the blog author herself has said (elsewhere, in a forum post that led me to
the blog post), this is old, old, old news, but maybe it needs to be new news
again.

I got fooled by one of these yesterday -- the first time in many years. If you
want to see the page that fooled me, here's a screen shot:
[http://www.ergy.com/Synergy-screen-IE.png](http://www.ergy.com/Synergy-
screen-IE.png)

I have been in communication with the owner of the site on which the ad was
shown. Since our exchange is public anyway (it's in a Google Group) I will
take the liberty of posting an excerpt of his reply here:

 _It is possible for us to block individual ads in the Google AdSense, and
indeed I spent a fair few hours one day some time ago individually disabling
the green-button-download-ads. From memory I 'd say I disabled around 500 of
them- it took me a while anyway. Unfortunately the next day many new ads
appeared- and same again the next day, etc. Turns out its impossible to stop
them unless you have hours a day spare to disable ads. I have complained to
Google, but I imagine since this is so lucrative for them, it wouldn't make
financial sense to stop it.

I have tried many ways of solving this issue: using other ad providers,
disabling the ads and asking for donations instead, blocking entire AdSense
categories. Unfortunately each one of those "solutions" drastically reduced
the amount of funding raised for the project, to the point where we'd be
underfunded. So for the time being, I'm sorry to say the ads are here to
stay._

I was under the impression that Google tries to block ads from malware sites.
Well, they don't seem to be trying hard enough. It isn't even possible for
site owners who _want_ to opt out of malware profits to do so.

~~~
greenyoda
_" I have tried many ways of solving this issue: using other ad providers,
disabling the ads and asking for donations instead, blocking entire AdSense
categories. Unfortunately each one of those 'solutions' drastically reduced
the amount of funding raised for the project, to the point where we'd be
underfunded. So for the time being, I'm sorry to say the ads are here to
stay."_

In other words, they're knowingly and deliberately exposing their site's
visitors to malware to fund their project.

And that's why I feel no guilt when I block ads in my browser.

~~~
wutbrodo
Unless this guy runs every ad-supported site on the Internet, I don't see how
this has anything to do with feeling "no guilt"

~~~
greenyoda
This guy is running ads provided by Google, which also supplies ads to _many_
other web sites. And if Google is distributing malware, other ad providers
probably are too.

Everyone who runs third-party ads on their site also knows that they're
serving up malware. Or if they don't know, they're probably using ad blockers
themselves, or they live in an isolated bubble and never met someone whose
machine got infected because their kid clicked on the wrong ad.

And I'm happy to pay money for non-ad-supported sites if their services are
useful to me.

~~~
wutbrodo
That's explicitly not the situation described in his post and your comment. As
you yourself quoted in your previous comment, he did try things that stopped
malware from being shown on his site, but wasn't willing to take the
accompanying revenue hit. I know you didn't misunderstand the situation,
because that was your whole complaint! (that he knows he could remove malware
but isn't willing to do so because it's more profitable to continue
advertising it). This means that there _are_ ways to avoid knowingly
advertising malware, and unless this guy runs every site on the Web, your
rationalization for feeling no guilt is based on flawed logic.

