News - Advertising is now worse than porn for smartphone health

[HEXUS]

The 2014 Blue Coat Malware Report says 'malvertising' is biggest threat gateway.

Read more.

[fatguy666]

"Never download or purchase an app outside of legitimate markets such as the App Store or Google Play."

Really depends what it is. I use tubemate which is not on the Play store, guess Google don't want people downloading youtube videos so easily!

My mum installed some video player from the Play store to watch avi's on her Nexus 5. Without warning it took over her lockscreen and was throwing up ads for great bargains every two seconds. I imagine Apple are a lot stricter with their store so there's less chance of that with them, Google just seem to let any old app onto the store until someone complains!

[McEwin]

"Avoid clicking on ads on your mobile device" doesn't bode well for advertisers!

[Frankenfurter]

Dodgy ads are one of many reasons I use ad-blockers on all devices, and I think this is pretty common (but also doesn't bode well for advertisers). I'll occasionally let a site through if I'm a site regular but only so long as the ads are non intrusive.

I imagine if everyone did this or more devices came with ad-blockers by default the situation would be a lot better, although there would eventually be a lot less free content on the web...

[crossy]

Dodgy ads are one of many reasons I use ad-blockers on all devices, and I think this is pretty common (but also doesn't bode well for advertisers). I'll occasionally let a site through if I'm a site regular but only so long as the ads are non intrusive.

I imagine if everyone did this or more devices came with ad-blockers by default the situation would be a lot better, although there would eventually be a lot less free content on the web...

There was this discussion last year about the merits of wholesale ad blocking. I remember that someone from the Hexus team pointed out that the only reason that this (excellent!) site is free is because it's ad supported. So no ads means having to put up a paywall and I don't think that anyone is a big fan of that idea.

New figures published by security firm Blue Coat Security Labs show that adverts with embedded malware are now the largest treat to mobile device security.

... and this is why you need to buy our latest mobile security suite ?
Cynicism aside, I actually do run an anti-malware suit (AVG's) on my phone. But I only do that because it was inexpensive and isn't intrusive. Made the mistake of leaving my Bluetooth on (and visible) the other day and someone/something tried to push content to it.

Oh, and "porn on a smartphone" - anyone that desperate that they get jollies from a tiny badly-pixelated image? Ah well, it takes all sorts I guess.

And yes I know - large screen phones (5"+) is the answer to the "tiny" bit, and 4G for the "badly pixelated" part.

[Frankenfurter]

There was this discussion last year about the merits of wholesale ad blocking. I remember that someone from the Hexus team pointed out that the only reason that this (excellent!) site is free is because it's ad supported. So no ads means having to put up a paywall and I don't think that anyone is a big fan of that idea.

[...]

Oh, and "porn on a smartphone" - anyone that desperate that they get jollies from a tiny badly-pixelated image? Ah well, it takes all sorts I guess.

Yes I know ad-blockers are a problem too, but unfortunately so many sites let themselves get wrecked by ads that blockers are more or less a necessity as far as I'm concerned, especially on mobile where you might be paying for the bandwidth. Luckily most blockers have white lists, it's just up to users to well... use them... and sites to avoid the sort of ads that make people run blockers in the first place.


And I don't think screen size will stop people, folk'll be watching it on Google Glass soon I bet.