Why is my antivirus package showing on the ad box next to Best answer

[DTCwordfan]

I use Bullguard and the malicious site warning is showing in ad box next to Best Answer.....rather interesting I thought

Maybe it is Hula's anti-smoking stance that is triggering it......

Unusual though?

[AB Editor]

Quite unusual.

It's possible because of the way we serve ads. Sometime we serve them through iFrames and the content is served from somewhere else (i.e. a different web address). Bullguard may think that this looks like a threat as the page contains content from elsewhere.

Shouldn't be a problem though.

[DTCwordfan]

Thanks Ed - no I don't see it as a threat - your explanation makes sense though.....it's not every ad and at the moment its fine (O2 showing).

[Old_Geezer]

It's not impossible for the ad providing companies to let through something malicious, but the most likely explanation IMO is a false positive by this Bullguard app.

[AB Editor]

"it's not every ad and at the moment its fine"

With some of them they'll be ads we've sold to outside advertisers. These will display to you first. After a while you'll have seen all these external ads and it will switch to "house ads" - these are through Google and are likely to be recognised by your A-V. As a user who invests a wedge of time here you're likely to see these adverts (which would give the sense of the problem going away).

O_G is correct, something bad could come through using iframes to display external ads, but it is very very unlikely.

All the best,

Ed