Bottiger
Administrator
There have been rumors going on that Skial purposefully uses malware ads to get more money. This is not the case. There are no advertisers that solely serve malware, and we get less money for not using a full screen ad.
First of all, it is important to know that only a few people saw this ad and the ad was quickly removed. They were likely not even infected.
It is important to know how 99% of banners ads (what we used) work on the internet. This is what happens when you buy a banner ad.
- Specify how much money you want to spend and targetting options like country.
- Specify an image.
- Specify the link when you click on the image.
- None of these options allow you to add Java code to the ad.
So what does this mean?
- When these things are found they are removed promptly.
- This happens to anyone, even Google or Reddit. It is impossible to always make sure the destination doesn't change to something bad.
- There aren't any advertisers who's sole purpose is to serve malware. That would be illegal.
- You can't get infected just by looking at the ad. It is a picture with a link and that cannot infect you.
- The anti-virus screenshots shows that they popup on any URL or image related to the virus. You cannot get infected by an image, and if you do not click on the image you would never have landed on an infected page.
- Looking at the recent Java exploit, you will always be asked to run Java even if the applet is signed. There is no exploit to run without being prompted. You cannot get infected by Java if it never runs.
Here are the links where people are spreading rumors.
/r/tf2
/r/games - Fortunately the moderators were unbiased enough to mark it as sensational