AdGuard Research
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It seems like ads are everywhere, but is it really so? Find out in our new report how the share of ads and trackers varies around the world, how much traffic they eat up on average, and what the situation is like in your country.
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The basic principles of digital hygiene
The rapid increase of people's personal data abuse by companies and individuals calls for the creation of some kind of self-defense checklist, and here is ours. -
80M People Scammed by Chrome Fake Ad Blockers: the Same Old Song
Chrome Web Store is overflown with malicious browser extensions. Millions of people use them and don't even realize they are in danger. Why does it happen and how to fix it? -
Fake Ad Blockers 2: Now with Cookies and Ad Fraud
Here is a story of how we (once again) found some fake ad blockers on Chrome Web Store — now with cookies and ad fraud. -
$5 Billion Worth Man-Made Disasters Then and Now
Facebook's recent $5 billion fine marks a new era. Personal data has been made a commodity by corporations. But do people on the web mind it at all? AdGuard has conducted a survey among its website visitors to find the answers, and the results are quite interesting. -
"Big Star Labs" spyware campaign affects over 11,000,000 people
In the previous article about the Unimania spyware campaign I promised to tell you more about the privacy issues discovered during our automated scan of many Google Chrome extensions. This took me a while, and I apologize for the delay.
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Unimania: I Need Your Facebook Data, Location, And Your Browsing History
Privacy protection is basically what we do, so I never get tired of stories about how unpredictable the ways of getting Facebook user data are. Cambridge Analytica might be dead, but the business of stealing users’ data lives on, and this article demonstrates one more example of that.
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Over 20,000,000 of Chrome Users are Victims of Fake Ad Blockers
According to the PageFair 2014 report, Google Chrome is a major driver of adblock growth. 20% of users discovered ad blocking by browsing “available browser extensions”. Given how popular ad blocking is, it is quite a lot. This also explains why "cloning" wide-spread ad blockers has become so popular among online crooks. Seven months ago big news broke: 37,000 users were tricked into installing a fake Adblock Plus extension.
What if I told you that thanks to poor Chrome's WebStore moderation the situation is much worse, and in reality over 20,000,000 users are affected and tricked into installing fake malicious ad blockers?
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One does not simply delete Facebook
Calls to "delete Facebook" across different social media are growing in popularity. This is users’ reaction to recent publications in media about how a certain analytics company purchased personal data of 50 Million Facebook users from one of the app’s developer, and then proceeded to use this information to influence elections and political campaigns outcomes.
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Top Cryptojackers are video streaming websites, and they do not use CoinHive
Over the last two months, we received many reports on more than 120 thousand websites. It's important to notice that sometimes cryptojacking was detected on some legitimate websites (Google, Youtube, Instagram, etc) and this is most likely caused by malicious browser extensions or malvertising)...