Rogue Ads From Google Prompt You to Download a Spurious Text File

Ben Lovejoy, writing for 9to5Mac:

An increasing number of people are finding a wide range of websites — including ours — are asking permission to allow downloads to your Mac from googlesyndication.com …

The problem is a rogue ad that has made it through to the Google ad network, which is used by a great many websites. If you do allow the download, it’s just a harmless text file, but it’s annoying to have to keep hitting Cancel to block it.

This should not just never happen, it should not be possible to happen. If your ad network can foist a “harmless text file” download, it can foist any sort of file download.

★ Wednesday, 23 September 2020