Advertisements

What is an advertisement?
An advertisement is a form of communication to help sell or distribute a certain product for profit (to inform, to persuade and to remind).

Which are good and which are bad?
Text advertisements (usually seen on Google), and most image/video (banner) advertisements are mostly safe, however not entirely. Some of these include: unknown websites full of advertisement(s), pop-up/pop-under, and win a free product advertisement.

Are advertisements bad?
Advertisements have been used with different techniques that can seem potentially unwanted towards Internet users. Some techniques used are:


 * Banners
 * Promotions
 * False advertising
 * Drive-by-download
 * Propaganda
 * Redirections
 * Pop-ups
 * Pop-unders
 * Subliminal messages
 * Pre-installation
 * Optional Third-party inclusion in Installation
 * Nagware
 * Adware
 * Scareware
 * Mail and Spam

Some of these strategies can be seen as unwanted or malicious, such as Adware or Popups.

Some risks can lead to:

 * Frauds, scam and Phishing
 * Installing Adware, Spyware or other potentially unwanted programs
 * Spam
 * Hijacked computer or browser
 * Slower page loading
 * Identity theft

How can protect myself from these advertisements?
Enabling your pop-up blocker can block most of these pop-up advertisements, enabling Phishing protection can secure yourself from Fraud, downloading an ad-blocking program can get rid of these advertisements.

Pop-up blockers are found in all modern web browsers including Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox 2+, Chrome 2+, and others.

Not going to shady websites (those with a poor rating, poor surfing habits, etc).