this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
101 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37720 readers
280 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I cannot vouch for it, but this is their explanation: https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#does-adnauseams-clicking-put-me-at-risk-for-malicious-ads-or-ransomware
Does AdNauseam's clicking put me at risk for malicious Ads or ransomware?
Absolutely not. AdNauseam simulates clicks on Ads by issuing an AJAX request to the adserver in a background process. This request is made without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. The text-only request is safely discarded by AdNauseam before it has a chance to execute in the browser (no DOM is constructed and no code is ever allowed to run). Further, all cookies from AdNauseam's visits are automatically blocked before they reach the browser's local storage.
As a software engineer, I can't speak about their actual implementation, but I can vouch that it's a technically sound response, as far as blocking malicious ads from executing code from your browser.
However, I don't know what headers or parameters are being sent with the request. It's possible that a malicious ad could still track you using that metadata, so heads up on that