Recently we had a client of one of our customers call wanting to claim the $1,000 prize they had just won on our Residentlist.com mapping website. You can imagine my dismay when I heard this, since we have specific places on our site that we reserve for advertising purposes and our Residentlist.com mapping site is not one of them. So I went to the site to check out what they were referring too, and didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Then I had the customer send me a screenshot of what they were seeing (see below).

On first sight this looked perfectly legitimate, but in fact the “advertisement” was illicitly placed on top of the mapping tool in our site by some deviant code written by an unethical source. We call this Banner Spam.

Further digging revealed the following.

We found the company responsible for this hijacking was a rather unscrupulous spam marketer. This company is known for getting people to unwittingly signup for promotional ads from many unsavory characters on the internet.

So, how do you save yourself from becoming a victim of banner spam? The answers are simpler than you think. Below I’ve outlined several steps you can take to protect yourself from ad attacks like this one. By no means are these meant to encompass all the possible ways to secure your computers, but it will give you a general starting point.

1. Always keep your browser up-to-date with the latest manufacturer approved and prompted updates.

2. Run an industry recognized Anti-Virus software that has built in anti-phishing and cross-browser script protection. Remember, these products are only good when they are kept up-to-date against the latest threats.

3. Be careful when responding to any email asking you to signup for some sort of third-party ads, especially when they don’t specify who those third-parties might be.

4. Pay close attention when installing software that prompts you to install shortcuts in your browser. These tools are usually referred to as Browser Helper Objects or (BHO’s) and they add toolbars to your browser to assist you in performing tasks associated with software from specific companies. They can also be employed by hackers to put unwanted items on browser pages that fool unsuspecting users into downloading their hacking tools onto their computers.

5. Lastly, my standard rule of thumb is, “When in doubt, DON’T”. I mean don’t click, answer or respond to any ads or emails you are not 100% sure of their origins.

I don’t need to tell you that hackers and unscrupulous advertisers abound on the Internet and we must be vigilant when it comes to securing our systems from fraud. You can rest assured that we here at Compact are doing everything to keep you safe when using our compactlists.com.

Randy Kienzle
VP Tech