Google deploys flamethrower on Android ad-fraud apps Google has dumped a class of applications that employed a fraud botnet on its Android Play Store - the apps tapped malware that tried to game Google’s advertising network. Engineers at the search firm identified a spike in traffic to its ad servers and dubbed the concealed malware “Chamois”, it explained this week. Chamois …
Ad blockers are a bad thing because the user is in control :-J
However, given the nature of the activities of this new strain of adware, it would seem that more sophisticated ad scanning and blocking will become a part of the mainstream internet security products. Also I'm not sure, but what we are seeing is the rise of a relatively new strain of malware, where the target isn't the host it is running on, but a third-party - in this case Google's ad network.
And so, yet again, we're left to wonder if we have any of these "bad actors" on our phones. Probably a case of the horse already out of the barn, but still, I'd uninstall an app if I knew that it was up to no good. Not publishing the list just leaves us scratching our heads...
And "legitimate advertising business"? OK, I use gmail (for my "bulk" email), so it would be OK for Google to slap some ads on their web interface to keep the lights on. Of course, their web interface has gotten so horrid over the years that I stick to their (almost) IMAP interface. Sorry, Sergei.
As for precision targeting, I still shake my head remembering when they started slapping up ads for kilt rental and bagpipe lessons next to a thread on functional programming (which _might_ have mentioned Haskell, but had not by that point mentioned Glasgow)
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