The Wild Wild West of Online Advertsing

Security expert Benjamin Edelman discusses the latest online advertising techniques used by legitimate and not-so legitimate advertisers – bottom line, it is all about the mighty dollar.  In the book Beautiful Security (Oram and Viega, 2009) chapter six titled, Securing Online Advertising: Rustlers and Sheriffs in the New Wild West, Edelman states that, “Online advertising remains the Wild West where users are faced with ads they ought not to believe and where overpay for ads without getting what they were promised in return.” Edelman goes on to say that as advertisers get more and more sophisticated, they are less likely to accept services by ad agencies that they cannot confirm they actually did receive. (p. 105)

Edelman goes in to some detail about how ultimately the end users are the ones most vulnerable of these advertising attacks. A typical user cannot identify what is a legitimate ad and a deceptive one that can execute harmful computer exploits that can take total control of ones computer. Says Edelman, “Later in 2004, British IT news site The Register was hit by an exploit that installed malware on users’ computers, showed pop-ups, tracked users behavior in great detail, and even converted users’ computers into spam-spewing zombies.” (p. 91)

Even familiar and respected sites are not entirely safe. As the FTC tries to combat this with litigation citing “nonconsensual installations” which says that ones computer is private property and are a “trespass to chattels.”

Talking about advertising itself, Edelman goes on to discuss Malvertisments and Deceptive Advertisements in the chapter. Regarding Malvertisements, Edelman suggests that, “Unlucky users sometimes encounter banner ads that literally pop out of a web page. In some respects these ads look similar to pop ups, opening a new web browser in addition to the browser the user already opened.” However these ads pop open without the underlying website knowing or authorizing it. (p. 92)

The author also discusses the idea of Deceptive Advertising where advertisers use misleading ads like eye catching survey questions (Do you like George W. Bush) or false claims (Get free ring tones). And when one clicks on these deceptive ads it takes one to a completely different website all together.

As Edelman refers to this online advertising environment as the Wild West where advertisers, brokers and users try to uncover profit models while remaining secure, Edelman sums it all up when he states, “online advertising economy offers exciting opportunities for those with interdisciplinary interests, combining the creativity of a software engineer with the nose-to-the-ground determination of a detective and the public-spiritedness of a civil servant. Do well by doing good – catching bad guys in the process!”