Ads Behaving Badly

  • Just leaving the form index page open causes about 8MB/minute of network data usage (40MB in 5 minutes, all measured after the initial page load of 3MB). This is very bad for anyone on a metered (especially mobile) connection.

  • Something is making network requests as much as 10 times a second on an ongoing basis. Addresses look like the following:

http://track1.aniview.com/track?d=&cou=US&cos=OSX&r=straightdope.com&rs=straightdope.com&sid=23084&t=1495289383&cip=173.69.172.84&sn=&tgt=0&cd1=&cd2=&cd3=&osv=&bv=&brn=Safari&nid=5641d3f9181f46f4738b4567&ncid=58eb80bb28a0611d485386ea&nasid=5919b61b073ef45bf45edd5e&e=vpaidInitAdError&cb=1495289408243

This is causing massive CPU use: fan activity on laptop/desktop, overheating and absurdly fast battery drain on mobile.

  • Many, many security violations are occurring. I don’t know if this is malicious activity or just a programming mistake. Some unique errors listed below (they all repeat many times).

[Error] XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://sync.search.spotxchange.com/partner?source=dados due to access control checks. (x2)
[Error] Origin http://boards.straightdope.com is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.
[Error] XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://search.spotxchange.com/vast/2.00/181978?VPAID=js&content_page_url=straightdope.com&cb=5289640828&allow_flash_creative=0&player_width=480&player_height=360 due to access control checks.
[Error] Blocked a frame with origin “http://boards.straightdope.com” from accessing a frame with origin “http://vast-f10-us-va.adhigh.net”. Protocols, domains, and ports must match.
[Error] Blocked a frame with origin “http://boards.straightdope.com” from accessing a frame with origin “http://tap2-cdn.rubiconproject.com”. Protocols, domains, and ports must match.
[Error] Blocked a frame with origin “http://boards.straightdope.com” from accessing a frame with origin “http://tpc.googlesyndication.com”. Protocols, domains, and ports must match.
[Error] Blocked a frame with origin “http://boards.straightdope.com” from accessing a frame with origin “http://tags.bluekai.com”. Protocols, domains, and ports must match.
[Error] Blocked a frame with origin “http://boards.straightdope.com” from accessing a frame with origin “http://bcp.crwdcntrl.net”. Protocols, domains, and ports must match.

It looks to me like it’s coming from our advertisers. I don’t know how much control we have over their data usage. I’ve sent a message to our admins to have them look into it.