the ad bolcker should save you

adblock for firefox has a list of the domains to block so the banners are never loaded

(obviously the white listing of sites will circumvent any protection he gets if he tells adblock (or which ever he uses) to load all content on the page and not just ads that are hosted by the website he is visiting)

I second that. Got just that on Tom's Hardware the other day. I emailed 'em with my findings and got a nice reply back saying they'd identified the bit of scroteware concerned and blacklisted the ad company serving it until they could prove they'd got their house in order.

If all reputable sites behaved this way, the problem would disappear quicker than snow in the Sahara. The ad servers need to be forced to put controls in place to prevent this sort of thing and summarily severing their revenue streams is the only language they understand.

It would help here if the marketing idiots who sign contracts with ad servers would learn to insist on a clause to the effect that any misbehaviour would result in them getting turned off until they'd taken effective steps to remedy the situation rather than happily signing something that says something like: "We the bum-sucking ad servers reserve the right to roger you over the table repeatedly if you so much as dream of interfering in our access to your clients"......

About 4 years ago after Falk (?) got their servers hacked and started serving malware via banner ads, I started using a HOSTS file that came with Kazaa Lite

which alias out a ton of 3rd party cookie and ad servers.

I've since then added Flashblock and NoScript to Firefox ( after the Falk AG incident I stopped using MSIE as my "everyday" browser.

Now I only use IE for mainstream media sites and ones run by public sector agencies.

...Dumbest Ideas in Security...

Worth a read indeed! Thanks for posting that.

One aspect missed by your commentators so far (techies, bless 'em!) is the issue of liability. When some harm occurs (from as trivial as a family PC having to be rebuilt at, to them, great inconvenience and cost, upwards), who ought to provide compensation?

I have mailed a UK national newspaper about this in relation to something much more trivial (a button being transparently overlayed by an advert which thus took me to the site of a UK airline) and recieved a holding reply.

Is it the newspaper which is the end deliverer? The advertiser with whom they contract? And so on upstream. My take is that it OUGHT to be the site which I chose to visit, as I have no control over anything upstream (hence the issue in the first place).

I don't know where the law stands.

It's like showing up at the Queen's door in a Yugo.

What was the topic again? Ads? What ads? I haven't seen an ad in quite some time.

Get your hosts file from here:

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm [Updated 01-03-08]

Then use Adblock+ and maybe Flashblock and NoScript.