Are Search Ads Safe?
Are the ads you see on internet search engines, and on the web in general, safe to click? According to recent and not-so-recent articles in the wash. post, times online, wash. times, and vnunet, among others, using search and contextual ads to spread viruses and adware is becoming a favorite method.
Who should be concerned about this?
For starters, anyone who surfs the internet should be aware that merely clicking a link to another site can trigger an automatic download attempt. Also, in some cases ads may be mislabled and not always direct to the site that they lead you to believe.
Another group which may have a reason to be concerned about this problem are webmasters who employ contextual ads on their websites. (Contextual ads are ads for 3rd parties which search engines place on individual websites in return for a share of ad revenue).
Lets say you run a website. When a site visitor clicks on an ad on your site and is directed to a site which attempts a virus download, causing a virus warning on the visitors computer, naturally that person will be somewhat P/O’d and may be unlikely to return to your website.
What steps can you take?
1) Firstly, make sure you have a working, updated anti-virus program installed on your computer. Also an anti-spyware program. There are some free, quality spyware programs available such as Spybot and Ad-aware.
2) No virus program is 100% effective. It may be important for you and your sites visitors to avoid clicking on a ‘bad’ ad to begin with. There are some new products entering the market to address that issue such as LinkScanner Pro.
For their part, google has recently canceled some adwords accounts found to be spreading malware.