Why are you allowing arbitrary javascript to be served to your users?
It's ridiculous. It's a text-based ad. At worst, it's a clickable image. At what point did it become okay in your minds to let advertisers run arbitrary code?
I've left ads turned on specifically on StackOverflow because 1) I want to support StackOverflow, and 2) I trust them not to run malicious ads.
I don't even care that they're running ads network-wide. But if they're going to be running these kinds of ads anywhere on the site, they're going right on the ad block list along with everyone else.
Imagine a TV ad that tries to make your phone call a 1-900 number so they can rip you off, and the station says they don’t know where it came from but they’re trying real hard to put a stop to it. And somehow watching the ads themselves before broadcasting them never crosses their mind.
In any other context we would call this a security vulnerability. I think that label also applies here.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choo...
But that's assuming it doesn't try to connect elsewhere if it detects it doesn't have internet.
Imagine having to take countermeasures like this to prevent things you've purchased from spying on you!
No single publisher today really has the power to change much, no matter how big they are. The issue likes with adtech (like Google) and advertisers.
Unfortunately running javascript means these ads can do anything at any time and change into malware. Other than adding some technical guardrails, the best practice would be to ban bad actors (of which many are known and usually the same shady people) but many large adtech companies look the other way because it makes money and they have no consequences.
Malware and adfraud is primarily a business problem, not a technical one.
It's not that simple. There are many layers in the supply chain that currently requires JS. Publishers can't disable the JS and they can't demand JS-free creatives either.
You’re saying that doing this would drastically decrease ad revenue. Which is what I’m saying too: it’s about money, not necessity.
Would a site like SO be unable to survive without ads that run arbitrary JS? I don’t know. Even if the answer is that they must do this to survive, it’s still insane that content companies let randos inject arbitrary code into their pages. If this is so entrenched in the industry that there’s no way around it, that just means the industry is insane.
Simple doesn't mean it's easy or realistic. Yes, adtech has major problems but they're being slowly worked on and won't change overnight. This applies to any other industry where you think can just walk in and solve everything if everyone just did X. Reality doesn't work that way.
Of course reality doesn’t work that way. Ad companies aren’t going to change, because they like money and don’t give a shit about users.
We’re stuck in a local minimum. It’s insane. It could be easily fixed if everyone just stopped doing the insane things. And they won’t stop.
And yes, I'm enjoying my 90's internet and enable JS when it is needed (rarely) for specific domains.
* adverts are vetted by a human
* adverts are not allowed to inject JavaScript.
There have been a few interesting blog posts from businesses outside of the adult entertainment industry where they discuss just how work is involved in getting an advert approved on adult sites.
It’s a sad state of affairs when an adblocker is less required on porn sites than it is on Stack Overflow.
Adult ads are definitely not better and are served by even looser networks that allow anything. That industry has pioneered things like popunders, clickjacking, and monetizing every possible action on a window while serving as the primary vector for malware and browser bitcoin mining. I'm not sure what blog posts you've read but the only strict standards they would have is on getting paid.
What you’re effectively doing is looking at Source Forge and then arguing that Github, Gitlab and Bitbucket are all probably just as bad.
* remove the ability for 3rd parties to abuse their automatic powers (ie disable their ability to inject JavaScript)
* or have a human manually vet every creative
The problem here is you neither want to control their access nor take responsibility for monitoring their access. So the blame equally lies with yourselves for not managing an easily exploitable vector of attack.
If this were any other system, eg VPN, security professionals would tear you a new asshole and point out just how irresponsible your lack of management is.
You’re only excuse here is greed and frankly I’m disgusted.
I'm not sure who you think I am or why you're accusing me but none of this is down to a single person.
> To the people confused why ads need to run their own Javascript (even ones that are just static images): The short answer is that Ad Networks do not and cannot trust website operators. They need to run their own JavaScript served from their own servers in order to verify that a real user saw the ad and for how long, and they can't trust the website operator to tell them. And these pieces of JavaScript tend to be more invasive and privacy-destroying than the website's JS because they care, far more than the actual website does, that the "user" is not a bank of iphones in a sweatshop in China.
[1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/386487/why-is-stack...
Could we require advertisers to sign their ad code to have a trail of where it came from, prevent tampering, and make it easier to pull the plug on bad actors?
The people bearing the costs of the internet ad economy aren’t the people in any position to do anything about it. So there’s very little pressure to fix anything.
Maybe if the US government started threatening to enact something like GDPR unless the a democratic industry gets its shit together.
https://feature-policy-demos.appspot.com/
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/06/feature-po...
You also need to somehow <iframe> the ad content (and serve it from somewhere else with the feature policy header set/attribute on the iframe set) or else sacrifice use of these features on your own site.
The solution is to make the ads inert. They do not need to run code.
By serving this ad with JavaScript not vetted to StackOverflow's presumed standard, StackOverflow has violated that trust. Thus the onus is on them, not the user, to remove the offending ad or risk damaging their brand.
Honestly, what you said is like saying "why would you ever not keep a hand on your wallet" after someone got pickpocketed in a nice restaurant. Reasonable people have reasonable expectations of safety in certain places which they trust to provide it for them. No-one should go around being constantly paranoid of pickpockets everywhere, no more than anyone on the web should be constantly paranoid of malicious JavaScript even on sites with established records of safety.
I agree that StackOverflow is at fault here, but enabling JS is not a binary choice — "allow all JS on this site" vs "block all JS on this site" are not your only options.
Tools like uMatrix allow me to control JS coming from different domains on different domains independently. For example, on SO I have enabled JS from Stack Exchange and related domains, but not from Google or other snoopers.