May 28 2010
Sneaky Tactics: Making Adverts Look Like the Browser Part 2
In 2008 I blogged about a site displaying adverts disguised as browser-style yellow bars and the risks associated with this shady tactic (especially if something a little more sinister than an advert were linked!)
Clearly nothing has changed in the past 2 years, because it’s still happening.
I clicked through to an article in The Independent whilst using Google Chrome and saw:
Note the almost convincing Chrome-alike yellow notice bar across the top? It beggars belief that a respectable UK newspaper would use this sort of sneakery to push their new browser extension, especially as they’ve hijacked the Chrome icons to make it all the more convincing.
When did it become OK to prey on the ignorance of users?
Warning
This post is over 6 months old. This means that, despite my best intentions, it may no longer be accurate. Age, motherhood, experience, loss... these things have all changed me from when this blog was started back in the heady (ha) days of my youth.
As much as I would like to go back and edit 10 years of archives to provide an insight into the 'me' of now — to update coding snippets and revise website advice — it would probably take years to do so (by which point I'd have to start again!) This would defeat the point of keeping these archives anyway.
Please take these posts for what they are: a brief look into my past, my history, my journey.
12 Responses so far
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It would be ironic if you saw than on an independent article talking about spoof emails and the like!
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Sneaky buggers! This just goes to show you cannot be too careful on the net. :S
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I just viewed the page in Firefox on a Mac and didn’t get a Firefox-style plug-in suggestion – I was half expecting to. Seems weird that they’d choose Chrome as a target when it’s generally people more familiar with the web that use it (as opposed to IE).
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Sneaky!
There are also the ads that make themselves look like legitimate new articles when they pop up. People know not to generally install extensions they didn’t want, but when a popular news site appears to be advocating some weight-loss product? :\
Ads that are made to look trust-worthy… bad news. :(
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When did it become OK to prey on the ignorance of users?
When greed overtook common decency. :P
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Taking advantage of people has always been a viable (albeit immoral) business tactic. I am on your side though, don’t mistake me, this is definitely not a fair tactic.
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It’s not about what’s "OK", it’s about what works. I’m not supporting it in any way, but it’s just the way things are.
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Ha, I got it as well. I use a super ad-blocker extension so I thought maybe that would be blocked. Alas, it was not. That is extremely tricky.
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I saw the same thing! It seemed different than the real chrome bars so I just hit the x-button.
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I wish Google and the other search engines could do something about this and hand out penaltys to websites that do this. Also from a visitors POV, if I came across a website that had adverts like this I would never return.
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Sneaky annoying adverts. As users, we don’t really have that much right to choose, especially when you are facing some big companies in the world. All know that google is using some shady tech to collect user info. But we still google a lot on the internet. There is really not much you can do about it.
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Seems like shady new tactics are always coming out. Some of the methods even off line businesses are doing these days are also reaching new lows. Ticks me off for sure.
