I run an online media streaming site for public safety communications, and we've noticed that Adsense advertisers often use these exact social engineering techniques to display download/play links that end up having customers install crappy spyware infested "media players" and other software.
My jaw dropped when I saw this blog post.
If all your options are terrible, you might as well use the terrible option with the largest ROI, right?
No, thanks. Does The Deck serve spammy, malicious ads? I know they're tightly targeted at the techy/designy crowd, but they're also a great example of high ROI ads that aren't terrible.
I'm struggling to find one, any idea?
One of the options is "stop running ads". Why is a "site for public safety communications" running ads at all?
Public safety announcement: block all ads to make your browsing much safer. Use Adblock Plus (with so-called "acceptable ads" turned off) or uBlock Origin.
(incidentally, Lindsay, I've used http://www.radioreference.com to learn a great deal about Software Defined Radio, and I occasionally listen to various Illinois streams on http://www.broadcastify.com - thanks for running these sites!)
Thanks for the clarification; that makes more sense.
I'd still echo the comments from elsewhere in the thread about not doing business with a vendor with shady practices just because other vendors do no better.