I don't know whether anyone will see this, but there's something which is absolutely annoying me. Everyone has probably heard of adfly by now. It's a very popular link shortener, which forces you to look at ads for 5 seconds before you can proceed to the destination link.
There's nothing wrong with that.
HOWEVER, adfly doesn't seem to give a sh*t about security of anyone:
-
Inappropriate ads. Adfly is displaying NSFW ads and nude content on their "Wait for 5 seconds" page. This is especially a problem, since a lot of popular websites related to games (mostly the ones rated Pegi 0, like Minecraft) are still using adfly. I just came across a comment section under a Minecraft tutorial. There were several kids (age 11/12?) who were apparently traumatised because they saw porn on adfly when wanting to download Optifine.
-
Hacking. Yeah, adfly (or there related redirecting page "gloyah.{...}") uses Network attacks and device penetration of some sort. I've experienced it myself:
When I had to redirect via adfly once, Norton suddenly beeped really loud and displayed a warning (something like "Network attack. High Risk. Name: Fake Tech support..."). I've read before that this happens several times and there's some Adware, scamware etc. related to this.
- Annoying Spam & Unethical Ads. If you redirect via adfly, there's a good chance they will try to trick you into downloading a different programm. Older people won't know this and they'll probably end up with a virus the first time they'll come across adfly.
Adfly also uses the notification function and apparently several spam functions to further annoy you.
Conclusion: This isn't tolerable anymore. Adfly needs to be stopped if they don't seriously change their business model. Everyone can try to use a bypass addon in chrome or Firefox, or atleast a good adblocker and antivirus/antiphishing tool.
[link] [comments]
source https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/cxuyh0/adfly_needs_to_be_stopped_network_hacking/
