Current Events > PSA: You can now report bad ads.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/6-gamefaqs-announcements/76171603

Over the last couple of weeks, GameFAQs was hit by a round of malicious mobile advertisements, featuring pop-ups and automatic redirects to some very scummy sites. To be absolutely clear, we specifically prohibit these kinds of malicious ads on GameFAQs, but unfortunately the people behind them use a ton of tricks to sneak them online.

Its one of the biggest problems on mobile sites right now (see https://redd.it/7obdev for an example of how bad it is), and while we take every step we can to prevent this from happening, sometimes the only way we can fight it is with help from our users.

Starting today, at the bottom of every page on GameFAQs you'll find a Report Ad link that captures all of the advertising information on a page and sends you immediately to a feedback form that lets you let us know when you run into a bad advertisement: scams, pop-ups that wont close, ads that automatically take you away from the site, or anything else that ruins your experience here. If you run across a bad ad, if you can take a few seconds to report it (including a screenshot really helps too), we can get them taken down quickly and start to go after the people responsible.

If youre curious as to how and why this happens, read on.

Most of the advertisements you see on GameFAQs arent sold by CBS Interactive directly, but are instead handled indirectly through several different partner ad networks. We sell space on the site to an ad network, who in turn sell those spaces directly to advertisers (or other ad networks, who sell to other networks, and so on). We even partner with ad networks that have instant auctions for each delivered ad, so theres no way of telling exactly which advertisement is going to be shown to you in advance.

Whenever a bad advertisement pops up, its rarely as easy as just blocking the ad. We have to find out which network it served from, and sometimes that can go several layers deep. When it gets particularly bad, weve turned off all mobile advertising for hours or even days just to ensure that the site is still usable. Our ad team even has its own internal software that is constantly checking third-party ads for any unwanted activity, and weve been relatively successful in stopping it most of the time.

While every ad network is responsible for the advertising they sell to us, working with trusted advertisers and scanning the ads themselves to make sure they dont contain anything bad, the creators of these malicious ads are always working to stay one step ahead of those scans. They can have time-based triggers, only activate on certain sites, only activate in certain countries (they seem to love the UK, sorry lads), and often only target specific devices with a known vulnerability. Some of the latest ads even contain anti-virtualization software; they detect when the advertisement is not actually running on a mobile phone, and wont trigger their payload if they suspect theyre being scanned for malicious activity.

The people behind these malicious ads take numerous steps to prevent us from even knowing theyre running on our sites, which is why if our users dont let us know theres a problem, we often have no idea its happening. We hate these kinds of advertisements even more than you do, and with your help, we can put a stop to them.

Yeah, I just noticed the link. Wasn't sure when they added it though.
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Just recently, apparently. Allen's post is only a few minutes old.

When did gamefaqs get ads?
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Guess he finally took notice to all the ad blockers
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praise be unto Allen!

I did notice the link at the bottom of pages in red, but then I got confused and thought maybe it'd always been like that
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good to know, thanks.
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The easiest solution is to just not have ads. Or just serve less, but that's less trollish of me.
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Egad! Bad ad!
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So, how am i expected to report an ad that sends me to a different page that doesn't have the report button?
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Good job Allen
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Mikablu posted...

Most of the advertisements you see on GameFAQs arent sold by CBS Interactive directly, but are instead handled indirectly through several different partner ad networks. We sell space on the site to an ad network, who in turn sell those spaces directly to advertisers (or other ad networks, who sell to other networks, and so on). We even partner with ad networks that have instant auctions for each delivered ad, so theres no way of telling exactly which advertisement is going to be shown to you in advance.

Is this total lack of oversight why ads have been getting out of hand? On mobile, at least, I'm often reminded of those old days before adblockers when it was like playing whack-a-mole with all the pop-ups.
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Oh cool let me try to quote someone.

Nope, didn't work.
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...ads?
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Last couple of weeks? I remember people complaining about that shit for years.
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Yeah, sorry. I'll keep using ad blocker. The ads were too bad for too long on mobile.
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That's been a thing for a long time. The easy to find link to the page is new as mentioned, though.

Edit: Oh wait, that page it takes you to is new. I switched to Brave for mobile, though, since the ads were terrible on this site and others.
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I haven't seen an ad here in years.
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Mikablu posted...

(see https://redd.it/7obdev for an example of how bad it is)

why link a reddit page when he could just say "see this site for an example of how bad it is"
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ad revenue thieves are disgusting scum

get off the site you leeching bacteria
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The report ad on the default color scheme is actually kind of scary lol. Everything's white and then this one thing is blood red
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It is rather startling lol
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uBlock Origin for Firefox Mobile says hi
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