Create website to inform users about adware

[philll]

Background

We keep getting a lot of user complaints via all sorts of channels which turn out to be due to the user having ad-injecting software aka adware installed. Since this is firing back on us in the user's eyes since we don' t reliably block all ads, we should help users getting rid of such software.

What to change

Create a web page available under under adblockplus.org/[language]/adware with the structure as shown in this ​design guide and the following content and meta data:

Meta data

• Document title: About adware
• Document description: What is adware and how to get rid of it
• Document author: Eyeo GmbH / Adblock Plus
• Sharing title: About adware
• Sharing description: What is adware and how to get rid of it
• Sharing image: ABP logo
• Twitter site (twitter handle): adblockplus
• Twitter creator (twitter handle): adblockplus
• Open graph type: Article
• Open graph site name: Adblock Plus

Content

I’m using Adblock Plus but I still see suspicious ads

What happened?
Adblock Plus has detected ads that are likely injected with Adware, which may have infected your computer.

What is Adware?
Adware is one type of Malware, short for "Malicious Software.” It is a term generally used for software installed on your computer that is designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without your consent. In many cases you obtained this software without knowing it, as these applications are often bundled in other software installers.

Why doesn't Adblock Plus block these ads?
Adblock Plus is designed to block ads that are delivered from websites or their advertising partners. Malicious software can inject ads in such a way that the ads can not reliably be blocked by Adblock Plus. The best way to stop these ads is to remove the Malware that displays them.

How can I solve this?

1. Get rid of unwanted programs

For users unfamiliar with the administration of their computer's operating system, it’s recommended to run automated checks for Malware with one of the programs listed below, which also allow to remove the found unwanted software. All of the programs are free (for at least a trial period) with full functionality, and safe to install alongside your antivirus solution.

Windows:
​Malwarebytes

Instead of the linked URL above, use these URLs according to the accept language header of the user:
http://buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/{country code}/?c=adblock&s={country code}&k=trial
and replace {country code} with one of these values: de, fr, nl, es, ru, it, pl, pt, br.
For English (and for not listed languages the English URL shall be defaulted to), the URL is just 
http://buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/en/?c=adblock&s=en&k=trial

​HitmanPro
​AdwCleaner

OS X:
​Malwarebytes

Instead of the linked URL above, use these URLs according to the accept language header of the user:
English (and for not listed languages the English URL shall be defaulted to):
​https://www.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/
Other languages:
​https://{country code}.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/
and replace {country code} with one of these values: de, es, fr, it, pt, br, nl, pl, ru

For advanced users, refer to the guides below to remove Malware and other programs on your computer that you don't remember installing. To regain control of your browsing experience, you must uninstall any malicious programs. For more help on uninstalling malicious programs from your computer, click one of the links below.

​Windows
​OS X

2. Reset your browser settings

Oftentimes uninstalling unwanted software does not restore your browser settings to their original state.
Follow these guides to do this manually:

​Internet Explorer
​Mozilla Firefox
​Google Chrome
​Opera
​https://help.yandex.com/newbrowser/faq/faq-settings.xml#reset Yandex.Browser]
​Safari 6 & 7
​Safari 8 & 9

How do I prevent my computer from getting infected with Malware in the future?

• Use official channels to download your browser:

​Mozilla Firefox
​Google Chrome
​Opera
​Yandex.Browser

• Install Adblock Plus: Adblock Plus can help to block and hide ads that trick you into installing potentially unwanted programs. Get Adblock Plus from ​https://adblockplus.org/.
• Keep your operating system and other software up-to-date.
• Don't click inside misleading pop-up windows: Many malicious websites try to install Malware on your system by making images look like pop-up windows, or by displaying an animation of the website scanning your computer.
• Don't install untrusted software: Some websites offer you software to accelerate your browser, to help you search the web, or to add toolbars that do things your browser already does. Some unwanted programs also come bundled in software packages. Usually, these programs gather information on your browsing behavior that serve only the people who designed them. Make sure you only install add-ons, extensions and plug-ins from your browser’s web store website and that you uncheck unwanted programs in software installation wizards.

[arthur]

Did we intentionally remove AdwCleaner (since it's not mentioned in the description but included in the deisgn guide)?

[philll]

Replying to arthur:
AdwCleaner doesn't seem to clean too many "potentially unwanted programs", just extremely obvious adware, also there doesn't seem to be a trustworthy download resource?

Did we intentionally remove AdwCleaner (since it's not mentioned in the description but included in the deisgn guide)?

[arthur]

I think this is the official homepage: ​https://toolslib.net/downloads/viewdownload/1-adwcleaner/ I don't really know much about their PUP detection.

[philll]

Not sure there are too many hints that these are the developers of that software. Also, if user being affected can potentially remove less with their software than with the other two solutions we suggest, that'd be bad.

[mapx]

adwcleaner is recommended by the guys at ​http://www.bleepingcomputer.com

see
​http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/

"The types of programs that AdwCleaner targets are typically bundled with free programs that you download from the web"

It's fast, very good. As I always recommended the user should scan using at least 2 anti malware utilities (malwarebytres + adwcleaner).

[SMed79]

@Xplode is the developper of AdwCleaner and the owner of toolslib.net so ​https://toolslib.net/downloads/viewdownload/1-adwcleaner/ is the first and official download link.

[philll]

Added back AdwCleaner.

[philll]

Old AdwCleaner URL redirects, using the final one directly now.

[Shikitita]

I'm guessing this is the final text, right? I'm asking because, while I was going through the information in order to have an idea of the terminology, word count and so on, I read the following sentence:

or to add toolbars that make things your browser already does.

If I'm not wrong, the verb "make" in this case should be changed for "do" as the meaning implied would be more appropriate (also considering that "does" is already used at the end of the sentence).

[juliandoucette]

We are missing:

• Document title
• Document description
• Document author
• Sharing title
• Sharing description
• Sharing image

And optionally (Only suggestions, there are many social media meta tags):

• Twitter card style
• Twitter site (twitter handle)
• Twitter creator (twitter handle)
• Open graph type (Article)
• Open graph site name (Adblock Plus)

[philll]

Added most of the tags, left out ones that would require more effort to investigate.

[juliandoucette]

## Here is a link to screenshots and a diff of progress so far

​https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9dIRGeSpmZ_Mk9Tdk9Zb2w5dmc

## Design questions

The following styles appear to be generic enough to be part of the site styles and not the page styles. Do you agree?

• Red text
• Unstyled table
• Unstyled list

The following items differ in style from those used on the rest of the site. Are you sure you want to give them unique styles on this page?

• Main font
• Main line-height
• Links color
• Heading 1 font size
• Heading 2 and 3 font size, line height, margins
• Paragraph margins

The following changes would make future style guides much more developer friendly

• Take line-height into account when measuring the margin above/below text
• Define re-occuring styles once and then reference them by a name elsewhere (including margin and padding)

## What's left

We are waiting on affiliate links and potentially style changes based on the answers to the previous design questions.

[philll]

Added athornburgh, the questions in the last comments are mostly for him.

[jobp]

We just received the new links from MalwareBytes with an affiliate ID. Please update to these links in the issue:

URLs to use for Windows =
buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/{country code}
Just replace {country code} with de, fr, nl, es, ru, it, pl, pt, br.

For English (and not supported languages English is default), the URL is just
buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/

For German, the URL is
buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/de

URLs to use for Mac:
For now, I can give you the following links for
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for Mac
They are generic.

English:

​https://www.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/

German:

​https://de.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/

Spanish:

​https://es.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/

French:

​https://fr.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/

Italian:

​https://it.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/

Portugese (Portugal):

​https://pt.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/

Portugese (Brazil):
​https://br.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/

Dutch (Netherlands):
​https://nl.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/

Polish:
​https://pl.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/

Russian:
​https://ru.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/

[Lain_13]

Hm… I wonder why Spybot - Search & Destroy is not in the list?

[athornburgh]

Just use existing styles for ALL text elements. That means only the numbers in green boxes would be unique.

My styles, padding and spacing were meant to mimic the existing site, but I didn't have those styles handy.

[jobp]

I have updated my comment above. Please use this information when adding the links to Malwarebytes.

[philll]

I updated the description to reflect the URL changes.
@Lain_13: I've not stumbled upon that tool when researching this topic and was listing the ones that seemed most recommended amnong the web and which worked best in my tests. We might consider adding it in a future incarnation of this site. Let's see how effective the whole information approach will be first.

[jobp]

Got an updated list of links - apparently a few parameters were missing:

URLs for Windows:

EN = buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/en/?c=adblock&s=en&k=trial
DE = buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/de/?c=adblock&s=de&k=trial
FR = buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/fr/?c=adblock&s=fr&k=trial
NL = buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/nl/?c=adblock&s=nl&k=trial
ES = buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/es/?c=adblock&s=es&k=trial
RU =buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/ru/?c=adblock&s=ru&k=trial
IT = buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/it/?c=adblock&s=it&k=trial
PL = buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/pl/?c=adblock&s=pll&k=trial
PT = buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/pt/?c=adblock&s=pt&k=trial
BR = buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/br/?c=adblock&s=br&k=trial

[juliandoucette]

Thanks. This issue isn't blocked by anything else is it? I'd like to finish implementing tomorrow.

[philll]

Yes, this issue isn't blocked by anything, feel free to continue.

[juliandoucette]

• I changed styles back to defaults re:Aaron's response.
• I ran into an issue with localizing the affiliate links. I opted to defer localization to translations because the links are technically content and not available for all locales.

This will be discussed further in the code review.

[Shikitita]

I am currently doing some research in regards to the localisation into other languages, where needed, of the brands and product names mentioned in the text and I've realised trademark symbols for some of those products and companies are missing.

Considering that we are somehow partnering with Malwarebytes for this as well as mentioning different products and companies with branding guidelines in place, we should respect those in order to keep everything, to put it like this, as legal as possible.

These are the different sources where this information can be found:

​Google
​Mozilla
​Microsoft
​Apple
​Opera

[juliandoucette]

@Shikitita maybe we should run this by Kia because these labels appear everywhere without trademark symbols.

[Shikitita]

Replying to juliandoucette:

@Shikitita maybe we should run this by Kia because these labels appear everywhere without trademark symbols.

Yeah, either Kai or Judith. At least to be on the safe side...

If by "everywhere" you mean our main website and so on as well, yes, I noticed when I double-checked those after I realised the lack of the corresponding symbols in this text.

The thing is that we're creating extensions for different browsers as well as, like I said before, "partnering" with Malwarebytes for this. The mention of those labels and their products (of which we aren't the owners) without the clear display of the corresponding ™, © or ® where necessary, according to their branding guidelines, could be a reason for those companies to sue us, as unlikely as that might be.

So I definitely wouldn't want to risk it.

[juliandoucette]

@philll

1. Is this link correct: ​http://buy.malwarebytes.com/get-trial/adblock/?c=adblock&k=trial
   • What about https?
   • Are we sure there are supposed to be two "adblock" params? "/adblock/" and "c=adblock"
2. Why don't we have an affiliate link for malwarebytes for mac? "​​https://www.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/"

[abpbot]

Some commits referencing this issue have landed:

• ​Issue 3802 - Create page to inform users about adware on web.adblockplus.org
• ​Issue 3802 - Create page to inform users about adware on web.adblockplus.org