A Trojan horse program is churning out bogus Google ads promoting products Google eschews—gambling, cheap Viagra, girlie photos and adult dating. The ads, being targeted at small publishers, are identical to Google AdSense ads except that referral graphic buttons are being converted to text, apparently due to a bug in the Trojan, according to the publisher who reportedly discovered the Trojan. That publisher, Raoul Bangera, told Techshout.com that the non-contextual and risqué content of the ads are what set them apart from regular AdSense ads.

"Contrary to the normal Google ads, which have some correlation to the content on the Web page, these malicious ads had no content that was remotely similar to the pages to which they had been attached," Techshout quotes Bangera as saying. "Most of the ads were about gambling or adult content, which are banned categories in Google AdSense, clearly indicating a suspicious origin." According to Techshout, when users click on the fake AdSense ads, they boot the user to three successive sites. The user is eventually dumped onto a page with a slew of ads and links to more ads.
 
News source: eWeek 


There are 11 additional comments
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(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #1 Posted by Hum on 31 Dec 2005 - 14:19
Thank goodness I don't use Google.<img src="images/smilies/cool.gif">

Quote this comment #1.1 Posted by Samurai-HQ on 31 Dec 2005 - 15:07
What has that got to do with anything?

The article is talking about AdSense Ads, which are on MANY websites, forums, blogs etc...

Why is there always one who never reads the full article, regardless of whether it's 2 paragraphs or a sentence? Thank goodness I don't have children.
(3 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #2 Posted by Croquant on 31 Dec 2005 - 14:32
Hell, I just block all ads with Adblock and Filterset G anyways. I never see AdSense ads, even the real ones.
Quote this comment #2.1 Posted by westonb_2005 on 01 Jan 2006 - 05:09
<P>And that is how sites make money and&nbsp;if you don't want to support any web sites then don't use the internet. But I do believe that ads can be excessive at which point I don't mind blocking them.</P>
Quote this comment #2.2 Posted by TRC on 01 Jan 2006 - 07:06
How is having ads blinking in my face supporting web sites? I'm not going to buy any of that garbage anyway so why look at them? They still get paid whether I see them or not.
Quote this comment #2.3 Posted by Hastin on 01 Jan 2006 - 11:24
Not true. On average, I make about .50 to a $1 a click on a ad with AdSense. Seeing the ads means squat. While I think that some sites go overboard, a common click for a site you like isn't too bad, and it's better than giving them a real quarter or two on PayPal.
(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #3 Posted by groingo2 on 31 Dec 2005 - 15:55
This news is at least three months old.
Quote this comment #3.1 Posted by matt74441 on 01 Jan 2006 - 10:30
Thank you for sharing that with us. However according to the source its a day old as of the posting of this news article. If the guys at eweek.com are posting this as old news then you should let them know
(2 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #4 Posted by Kushan on 31 Dec 2005 - 15:58
"products Google eschews—gambling, cheap Viagra, girlie photos and adult dating"

I can see people getting horrified when pictures of cute kittens and shoes appear on screen
Quote this comment #4.1 Posted by Spike101M69 on 01 Jan 2006 - 09:19
are you really that dumb or just really not funny?
Quote this comment #4.2 Posted by Kushan on 01 Jan 2006 - 21:59
Are you really that rude and arrogant or just poorly raised?
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