Advertisements on the EEVBLOG problem

[VK3DRB]

Hi all.

I for one appreciate the advertisement at the side of the EEVBLOG. Like in the electronics magazine of old, part of the fun and learning was from the ads. Besides, I have bought test equipment from EEVBLOG ads.

At home I use Adblock on Chrome, but I disabled the blocking of the EEVBLOG ads because the EEVBLOG ads are worthwhile.

However at work, I am getting annoying scam ads for Russian or Asian brides on the EEVBLOG front page, but on no other site. OK, so electronics people don't often attend discotheques to meet a partner, but the scammers target audience is wrong. In any case I am happily married so I DON'T WANT THESE ADS POPPING UP. I installed the Adblock on the Chrome at work but that blocks all adds, including the very EEVBLOG ones. So why am I getting these dodgy ads at work? I have the PC since new and have never visited dodgy sites and no-one else uses my PC. Is there any filter available which will stop these con artist ads, but allow the genuine electronics ads? The virus scanner picks up nothing and there are no other extensions in Chrome.

Have others found this problem too?

[IanB]

What happens if you use your browser to delete all saved cookies?

[Len]

Check for bogus browser plug-ins or other malware. There is some such that substitutes different ads on web pages.

[andtfoot]

I get them occasionally across a variety of computers. It's the AdChoices ones down the middle.

[kc9qvl]

Sounds like the work pc might be infected. Would do a scan with malware bytes and spybot search and destroy. Then maybe a virus scanner
malware bytes
http://www.malwarebytes.org/

spybot search and destroy
http://www.safer-networking.org/

various virus scanners
http://www.kaspersky.com/virus-scanner
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
http://www.bitdefender.com/scanner/online/free.html

[Stonent]

I have an extensive adblocking host file for work, I see very few ads, but also see very little "site blocked by security" in the place where ads used to be.  They're very strict on stuff there, so rather than appear in logs, I block it all.

[mariush]

The EEVBlog is mainly filled with custom ads, not served by an advertising company as far as I can see.

Just on the main page where the articles are, I see a couple of Adsense blocks. Those ... if you see ads for russian brides or something like that, either your computer is infected or Google is simply serving you ads based on your browsing history.

Adsense is still kind of dumb as in you may read a news article about gifts for brides and then an hour later read an article about russian traditions and then you may get targeted ads for russian brides.  It may not even be the case of you visiting websites, if your company goes to the internet through the same IP (or a proxy), someone else in your company may have googled for "russian brides" or accessed some sites, causing Google to serve ads for those terms.

[EEVblog]

I ad an adsense ad to each blog post. I have no control over what gets displayed there, it is determined by Google supposedly based on your browsing preferences etc. But you can also get forced ads.

[nitro2k01]

I ad an adsense ad to each blog post. I have no control over what gets displayed there, it is determined by Google supposedly based on your browsing preferences etc. But you can also get forced ads.

Actually, you do, if your AdSense control panel looks anything like mine.  If you click allow & block ads in the top bar, you have some options. "Sensitive categories", but that only contains (for me) "Birth Control" (presumably to appease the religious folk) and "Gambling & Betting (18+)".

However, you also have the more interesting "advertiser URL" and "ad network". If you can figure out the URL or which network that Russian bride service ad comes from, Dave could block it.

There's also "ad review centre" described as "Welcome to the Ad Review Centre. Here you can see ads that are eligible to run on your site and choose whether to allow or block specific ads or advertisers. Learn more. To enable the ad review centre for your account, please submit a request." But as it says, you need to submit a request. I'm not going to investigate this post, but might be something to try.

[G7PSK]

I used to get those Russian brides and Asian women adds as well but then I discovered Facebook do not track and after installing that all those adds stopped but they will come back if I use Disconnect or disconnect search as then Google does not know what type of adds I prefer and will send me any crap.

[VK3DRB]

I ad an adsense ad to each blog post. I have no control over what gets displayed there, it is determined by Google supposedly based on your browsing preferences etc. But you can also get forced ads.

A
There's also "ad review centre" described as "Welcome to the Ad Review Centre. Here you can see ads that are eligible to run on your site and choose whether to allow or block specific ads or advertisers. Learn more. To enable the ad review centre for your account, please submit a request." But as it says, you need to submit a request. I'm not going to investigate this post, but might be something to try.

Thanks for the info and I will look into it further. There are also other annoying random ads like for Norton's bloatware on EEVBLOG. I have never searched on the topics of these unsolicited ads, so how they appear on the work PC Chrome browser beats me. They appear down the centre of the front page but the real ads are at the right. I think Google filters the "V1a ggra" emails out quite well, but forced de-sexing of such spammers would have cured the problem - no filter required.

[nitro2k01]

Thanks for the info and I will look into it further.

Note that that all of what I described are administration features for webmasters who have AdSense ads on their site, so this is something that only Dave could do for the EEVBlog site. The only thing you could do to help is to figure out the ad network or URL that the page leads to so Dave could block the ads based on that.

[EEVblog]

However, you also have the more interesting "advertiser URL" and "ad network". If you can figure out the URL or which network that Russian bride service ad comes from, Dave could block it.

Sure, I can block individual sites or whatever, but that's just an endless slippery slope into oblivion to even try.

[EEVblog]

I rarely look at Adsense (it always changes), but I juts found this.
A way to block entire ad networks.
There are only 1249 of them!

[Simon]

well dating website adds seem to be the default when they don't know what to put. you don't need to have visited any "dodgy" sites. If adsense does not know what to put it will invariably put dating website ads, this is because the advertisers have to bid on the ad spaces and the dating one pay the best, also they know it is the emotive and click encouraging things that any bloke will be drawn to so even if the ad matching is not genuine it is an add that your a damn site more likely to clock and gets google top money.

i had a similar problem when i put google ads on a district website for rotaract, I got contacted by an "offended" rotarian that there are these dodgy dating website ads that should not be there, i explained that this was not the case for everyone. in the end i had to take them down.

[SeanB]

What is wrong with Russian brides? Ok, might not look like picture, might not speak English and definitely will be able to drink a brewery dry at a single sitting.

Then again, Simon can come out here next year and go to the Reed Dance. No pictures though......... Google at your peril, though here they will be posted on page 2.

[nctnico]

Maybe the dating ads get shown in EEVBLOG because of Dave's book (IIRC the guide to internet dating) 

[SeanB]

Well worth a read that book.

[dr.diesel]

What button do I press to get the hot Russian girl adds, I'm missing out?

[Simon]

What button do I press to get the hot Russian girl adds, I'm missing out?

clear your cookies and you will get them. Try googling something and you will find that what you just looked for suddenly appears in the ads

[SeanB]

What button do I press to get the hot Russian girl adds, I'm missing out?

VERY NSFW, but has them if you dare......

www. youporn. com  and look for them. Note has Google Analytics on there so you are guaranteed to get the dating ads afterwards.

Moderator edited to make a non clickable link

[rdl]

I use NoScript with Firefox and I have a huge hosts file (almost 900KB of blocked addresses) and I never see ads unless I specifically allow them.

[zapta]

clear your cookies and you will get them. Try googling something and you will find that what you just looked for suddenly appears in the ads

For experiments like this an easy way is to use the Incognito mode of Chrome.  When I complain to our IT about problems with my browser their first question is do you have these problems also in incognito mode?  I also useful for verifying that links you share with people will actually work for them.  It uses a virgin stock configuration with no extensions,  left over cookies, etc.

[SeanB]

Thanks Simon, I did warn.............. Best done with a VM that you delete totally afterwards.

[M0BSW]

What is wrong with Russian brides? Ok, might not look like picture, might not speak English and definitely will be able to drink a brewery dry at a single sitting.

Then again, Simon can come out here next year and go to the Reed Dance. No pictures though......... Google at your peril, though here they will be posted on page 2.

I don't which ones you have seen Sean , but I can tell you all the Russian girls that work  where I do look like Glamour Models, not a minger amongst the lot, and the English girls could learn a lot about appearance from them , just saying.