--Originally published at A work in progress
If you have a good eye you might have noticed how the advertisements from Youtube, Facebook and other social networks had changed in the last month. You are probably seeing a bit more (A LOT) from political campaigns and things related to them.
If you find yourself browsing through a web page that has any advertisements your computer might be in danger, or your data for that matter.
Welcome to the sad truth
First of all, let's talk about what is exactly , malvertsing. This is basically when you get attacked by viruses when you click on a pop ud or an ad, and you don't have to necessarily click on them, just by going into a web page that contains them you can get infected by it.
Here's how it looks like
Just follow these simple steps:
- Let's watch a Youtube video
- Oh look! an ad! I'm just going to close it
- Nope, there's probably some code happening in the background , already stealing your information
Trust me when I say this, tons of websites had been attacked by this, Spotify , The New York Times, CBS and the list goes on. Because there's no way to actually control it. If you have the money to buy any ad then you're pretty much halfway there.
How do they steal?
I wasn't lying when I said that this happens even to the bests. And unfortunately there's not an accurate way (yet , because I'm hoping that in the future this gets targeted, at least easily). This is a fabulous way of stealing information because imagine it as this.