A quick word about ads on our site
We have removed all ads on our site (with the exception of some Amazon stuff, since it’s not really all that spammy), due to a couple of recent developements.
Recently it was discovered that some WoW info sites like Wowhead and others are struggling with Trojans in their ad banners. Nasty ones at that, you don’t even have to click them for them to get on your computer, all you have to do is mouseover an ad and it executes. An article at WoW insider points to World of Raids as having the scoop, as well as providing some suggestions to protect yourself. I haven’t run across any of these Trojans yet, but I’m using firefox on a Mac and as far as I know Mac users aren’t affected, but I’d still advise that everybody be cautious.
If you’re on Windows they recommend that you use Firefox with the NoScript extension intalled. The known affected sites are Wowhead, Thottbot, and Allakhazam. If you’re using the Lightheaded mod I think you’re okay, since no ads are served to you through it. I’d imagine that quest info and ads are on separate databases so I doubt there’s any crossover.
On top of this, Google adsense just changed the user agreement to require that members post a Privacy Policy on their sites to inform users that…
…third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users’ browser, or using web beacons to collect information, in the course of ads being served on your website. Your privacy policy should also include information about user options for cookie management.
Third party web beacons? (There’s a good breakdown here)
We’ve been a bit unhappy with Adsense for a while (the completey inability to block ads from gold sellers for instance) so in the end we’ve decided that it’s much safer to just remove all of our advertising for the time being. Sure, removing the adsense might be unnecessary, but that policy change gave us a wee case of the wiggins, so they’re gone.
Ads don’t usually make for a great user experience anyway right? We’re looking into other ways to monetize the site, as well as the new features we’d already been planning.
I think Jamie may have a couple of points to add to this, so stay tuned.
Tags: Security, World of Warcraft
Once again, Penny Arcade says what I’m feeling :(
Tags: In Memoriam
I do not doubt PA’s predictive prowess
Tags: Gaming, Humour, MMORPGs, Penny Arcade