Add site text to warn users about ad injection

1 point

11 years ago

I recently added text like this to my web site: "Note: This site does not have ads. If you are seeing ads, a 3rd party has put them there. For help, please see this WikiMedia article.", where I link to a good blog post[1] by Wikimedia on the subject.

I think that all web sites should have something like this, as a way to educate visitors that they may not be seeing exactly what you have published (because of their ISP, some installed add-on, or other pest).

Of course, I would prefer to see a more technical solution. Ideally, a browser would be able to determine and display entity signatures for each part of a page, or at least give the user a list of all the entities that are represented and warn if anything is not signed. And for site operators, it would be great to be able to include the signatures of expected content in the site signature (e.g. page signature includes SocialNetwork.com and TheAdNetworkIActuallyPayFor.com, but clearly does not include CrappyISP.com or ShadyAdNetwork.net).

My suggestion is that sites start with user education, and my hope is that web protocols and practices can evolve to require stronger authenticity measures on all displayed content.

[1] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/05/14/ads-on-wikipedia-your-computer-infected-malware/