Airborne malvertising can't be far behind

found on eBaum's World

It's one thing to put some advertising slogan into the sky by flying a banner behind a plane or something. You might even fit a short URL up there that way. This, however, lowers a lot of barriers to getting your browser to their web site. That can be a boon for people advertising a legitimate product, but also to people trying to compromise your device. 

I know there's some debate about whether QR codes are dangerous from a cybersecurity perspective, and I get that in certain contexts it's relative effectiveness as an attack make it less attractive than more traditional approaches, but this is a scale that hasn't been considered before - a single QR code that can reach millions of people at once.

They snooze, we lose

from here

Ad companies' problem with ad blocking is partially of their own making. If ads were safer and less intrusive the people wouldn't mind so much and ad blocking wouldn't be as popular as it is. 

The ad companies are taking a different approach, of course. They use tracking because they think relevance is their main problem, and they take entirely insufficient steps to tackle safety because they think that's someone else's problem.

Don't lower your guard for someone else's bottom line

from here and here

Sites asking you to turn off your adblocker remind me of a certain mayor demanding people take off their masks before they enter stores. I don't know about you but I'm not willing to sacrifice myself or my computer in the name of capitalism. You're just going to have to find a way to make money in spite of my efforts to protect myself.

As if we needed more reasons not to click on ads

from here and here

Ads on Google Search (among other places, most likely) have apparently gotten considerably more dangerous lately. Careful where you click. 

Fine for thee but not for me

from here and here

As long as ad companies fail to crack down on malvertising, ad blocking remains a necessary security measure. Malware should not be the price of viewing web content. 

No clicks for you

from here and here

Of course heartless corporations are going to double-down on their toxic business practices, but don't listen to their arguments. Ads have been a security threat for a long time, and if an advertising company hasn't come to terms with that fact about the Internet yet then they don't deserve your attention.

Too many cons in your content

from here and here

Protecting yourself from malvertising is the single best reason to block ads. The fact that it improves the browsing experience immeasurably is just icing on the cake.

Yet another thing not to DIY

from here

Today I learned that there are open source ad servers that organizations can run themselves rather than going through a big name ad platform, and that those servers are (of course) vulnerable and being exploited to serve malware.