Advertiser invasion and other weird links
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Two problems have arisen lately with my blog. The first, I posted something with a few links to a specific site. When I test the links they all go directly to where they are supposed to go. A friend on his computer clicks on one of the links and it went to a 30 second Dove soap advertisement. Another time he clicked on the link and it took him to a Circ de Solei advert. And the second, I was on my site today on a friend’s computer and embedded at the end of a post just above the comment section was a short video advertisement for Jaguar. WTF? Has my site been hacked?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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WordPress.com has been running advertising on our free hosted blogs since 2006. Many bloggers do not know this because despite the fact they ticked the box required to get a free blog, they did not read the ToS. Many also do not read features page, or advertising entry in the support documents after registering their username and blog(s). Also note that as the ads do not display to us when we are logged in, and as many use browsers with ad blockers when logged out, they may not realize they are there at all. The only way to get rid of all advertising on our free hosted WordPress.com blogs is to purchase an annually renewable No-Ads upgrade.
If you feel an ad is inappropriate please take a screenshot of it and send it to Staff by emailing support@wordpress.com or upload it into your Media Library and contact Staff and let them know it’s there for them to view.
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I can understand the Jaguar ad as it is a separate, stand alone clip. And I have no problem with wordpress supporting the free service this way. The Dove ad was accessed through active links in the content of my blog posting. That’s seem a bit off, like hijacking a link… If it eventually leads to the intended content, I suppose I’ll learn to live with that, but my friend didn’t indicate that it did. I suppose this “feature” is talked about in the fine print somewhere? thanks for the quick reply, btw.
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That’s seem a bit off, like hijacking a link… If it eventually leads to the intended content, I suppose I’ll learn to live with that, but my friend didn’t indicate that it did. I suppose this “feature” is talked about in the fine print somewhere? thanks for the quick reply, btw.
I cannot locate any entry that states that our content is being linked to in this manner and I’m flagging this thread for Staff attention.
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We don’t run ads like that. In this past, this has been a rogue browser add-on or virus. Would you mind checking from a different browser?
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I have a call into my friend who experienced the problem. When I hear back I’ll follow up. Thanks for the quick work… wow. I’m impressed…. :)
I can say this much, after I heard of this from my friend I tested all of the links in the post on a different computer than my main computer, using a different browser. Both are macs, all of the links went directly to where they were supposed to.
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It seems my friend experienced the ad when he clicked on a link I sent him to the blog page I was promoting. The ad video started right up, apparently and he expected the video in the site I linked to to follow the ad. When it didn’t, he was confused and looked for the link to the posted video…. That worked fine once he found it.
Doesn’t appear to be any gremlins and viruses. All is well… thanks for your help…
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I think what’s happening is you have a better ad blocker than your friend does. He sees the spammy ad on that post, and you don’t.
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Yep, the video is one of the ads that we do run.
To support the service (and keep free features free), we sometimes run advertisements, and the agreement for this has been in our terms of service since 2006.
We try hard to only run them in limited places. If you would like to completely eliminate ads from appearing on your blog, we offer the No-Ads Upgrade: http://en.support.wordpress.com/no-ads/
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