You probably won’t be targeted by spyware, but if you are, odds are you won’t know about it. The latest spyware slips in unseen through online ads as you go about your digital life.
This is the crazy thing about ads. The ad network and site operators should be responsible for making sure both the ads and the people putting up the ads are trustworthy. The reason I now block all ads is this reason. Neither party cares and they are willing to act as a conduit for this stuff. In most other industries orgs are responsible for their supply chains.
Ah, but see that would require actual human attention and judgment for the vetting process, which would cost money. Automating the ad selling process is so much better… for the shareholders.
Hmm, sarcasm aside, now I’m thinking about it and wondering if you could at least automatically scan the ad content and distinguish between say, a jpg or webp image and a potentially malicious executable. If you could prevent ads from running any code, and only allow them to display static images, that might be good enough.
There are plenty of ways. They probably just do not want to do it. Easiest might be only certain allowed formats and all the content must be on the ad networks servers. They could allow more options for vetted business partners.
The problem with this is that I can label a file any format I want, because ultimately the file is just a string of binary. A lot of file formats use embedded headers to make them identifiable regardless of label or metadata, but it’s completely possible to fake those. I could even give you an image file that is malware, which would be difficult to identify until it actually did something malicious.
I think to be sure, you’d have to basically detonate every ad file in a sandbox environment to see if it tried do anything unexpected, which would be… less than simple. You’d have to check it across every major browser and OS, because it might only operate on specific systems.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !privacyguides@lemmy.one
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We’ve tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the “official” Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other “Privacy Guides” communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
No soliciting engagement: Don’t ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
Don’t repost topics which have already been covered here.
News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don’t abuse our community’s willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
This is the crazy thing about ads. The ad network and site operators should be responsible for making sure both the ads and the people putting up the ads are trustworthy. The reason I now block all ads is this reason. Neither party cares and they are willing to act as a conduit for this stuff. In most other industries orgs are responsible for their supply chains.
Ah, but see that would require actual human attention and judgment for the vetting process, which would cost money. Automating the ad selling process is so much better… for the shareholders.
Hmm, sarcasm aside, now I’m thinking about it and wondering if you could at least automatically scan the ad content and distinguish between say, a jpg or webp image and a potentially malicious executable. If you could prevent ads from running any code, and only allow them to display static images, that might be good enough.
There are plenty of ways. They probably just do not want to do it. Easiest might be only certain allowed formats and all the content must be on the ad networks servers. They could allow more options for vetted business partners.
The problem with this is that I can label a file any format I want, because ultimately the file is just a string of binary. A lot of file formats use embedded headers to make them identifiable regardless of label or metadata, but it’s completely possible to fake those. I could even give you an image file that is malware, which would be difficult to identify until it actually did something malicious.
I think to be sure, you’d have to basically detonate every ad file in a sandbox environment to see if it tried do anything unexpected, which would be… less than simple. You’d have to check it across every major browser and OS, because it might only operate on specific systems.