Adblock Plus

I've noticed that just in the last few hours google.com.au has started displaying a sponsored links box on my search results. The box contains adverts from "kallout.com" and "kourl.com" and it defies all efforts to get rid of it. I've added the URLs to the filter list, but the box still appears. What's interesting is the devious way google seems to be implementing it:

If I View Page Source and do a search for the words appearing in the ad box (e.g "buy new/used cars") the search shows they aren't there - in other words, I thought the box might getting put in by javascript so wouldn't show up in the page source. So I set NoScript (which I also use) to block all scripts on the page, but the box still appears, and is still not searchable in the page source. So I don't know how their hiding it from a source search if it's not javascript.

I've included a screenshot to show what it looks like:


Interestingly, the sponsored links box only seems to appear on some searches, while on other searches it doesn't.

Any ideas on how the hell Google are doing this and how I can make it disappear?

You may want to know that google doesn't have to send you a script to run or even have inline script in the html of the document. It can be automatically generated by other means that a more knowledgable person on the forum can tell you about.

KallOut ads are being inserted by an extension you are using. The one I know about is Fast Video Download. You can disable the ads there by setting extensions.kosa.smspHideAds preference to false. And - yes, Mozilla is already informed about the massive privacy violation going on there, KallOut promised to fix this.

Thank you for pointing that out, much appreciated. It did turn out to be Fast Video Download, which I've now removed and will not be using again. The deceptive insertion of ads into web pages without identifying the source or asking user permission constitutes malware in my book. Thanks for the heads up!

Wladimir Palant wrote:And - yes, Mozilla is already informed about the massive privacy violation going on there, KallOut promised to fix this.

Well guess what. They didn't. Almost a year after your post & I have the same problem. & I don't have any video dl-er installed.
:/

Could you send an Adblock Plus issue report (inluding extensions and screenshot) and post the report link here please?

memoric wrote:

Wladimir Palant wrote:And - yes, Mozilla is already informed about the massive privacy violation going on there, KallOut promised to fix this.

Well guess what. They didn't. Almost a year after your post & I have the same problem. & I don't have any video dl-er installed. :/

I would guess you've got something installed and you don't know about it. Those ads don't come from nowhere. It might've been malware or simply some free program that installed an additional toolbar without telling you it was part of its installation process.

Yes I know (now), it's the SearchMenu add-on for firefox. Just pointing out that Kallout didn't fix anything, beside their "promises".
SearchMenu comes from Kallout & it's a pretty good add-on actually, pity they have those lame ads injected in google search .
I'd keep it, but I don't know how far their "indiscreetness" goes...

Problem solved. I still don't know if this add-on is safe, but I got rid of those annoying ads.
To those who are interested, I added those filters
*.kallout.*
*.kourl.*
af.kallout.com (<-just to be sure )
in the (life saving I should say) adblock add-on & I added those lines
127.0.0.1 kourl.com
127.0.0.1 kourl.*
127.0.0.1 *.kourl.*
127.0.0.1 af.kallout.com
127.0.0.1 *.kallout.*
in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file.
I hope this post will help you people, I know I was looking for a solution for looong to no avail!

The hosts file doesn't accept wildcards, so I guess the only important hosts file line is "127.0.0.1 af.kallout.com".

Well, I stand corrected. I must have been too sleepy when I posted this .

I got these KallOut and kourl.com ads installed by this Firefox Extension:

SearchMenu - Search Faster in Firefox 2.0.2.2

It was still operating as late as 6/28/2011.

Disabling the SearchMenu extension got rid of the annoying ads. They now look different, they have an image (destination site screenshot) to the left and advert to the right.

Regarding "massive privacy breach", they seem to be sending your MAC address out too (hard to believe, but it is an entry in the parameters of the destination URL).

Greetings

I would like to add that all of you have ZERO concept of how content providing works. I guess you want a subscription fee to use google? Or do you honestly think they are going to decide not to be billionaires and work for free?

Those adds are NOT from Google but from the add-on. It forces those results on top of Google's
results. So before trying to be a smart(_)_) read the whole thread.
Btw, if a site chooses not to give me the option of removing adds through subscription then yes,
I'll block their adds. If they don't give me a choice, I'll make one on my own!

adding this filter to ABP worked for me (just for google.com domain): but since I'm very ignorant in ABP filter syntax I did the same for google.fr .de .es etc... adding a new filter for each google domain
I also tried both of this lines before: but they didn't work
If somebody knows a smart way to do that in a single filter line it would be nice