Report Inappropriate Ads on Gaia

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Every once in a while you might see an ad on Gaia that is inappropriate (non PG-13 or worse), intrusive ads that contain malicious content, ads for services that violate Gaia's Terms of Service, etc.

First, I would like to apologize for the ad. Due to how internet advertising works, we can not screen the advertisements on Gaia in advance.

Please, help Gaia get rid of these ads!


Johnny K. Gambino Wants You!

(art by clarion)


How can you do that? well, this is the purpose of this guide. Unfortunately, we need quite a lot of information to be able to track down and remove these ads. Depending on your level of interest in the subject, and your technical proficiency and the browser you're using, you might want to check one or more of the following posts:

2. A primer on internet advertising (or - why saying "the vertical banner on the forum landing page is inappropriate" is not sufficient for us to track down the ad)
3. How to report an inappropriate ad for: Windows
4. How to report an inappropriate ad for: Macintosh
5. Edmund pointing at you.
6 - 15 reserved
16. Example: reporting an ad using Internet Explorer 7
17. Example: reporting an ad using FireFox3

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A primer on internet advertising
or
why saying "the vertical banner on the forum landing page is inappropriate" is not sufficient for us to track down the ad

I'll try to keep it short and sweet, so we can get to the "how to report" part:

1. Gaia does not deal with advertisers directly. Gaia uses an agency that advertises on Gaia's pages. Currently, the ad agencies are DoubleClick and Google.
2. The ads don't go through Gaia, but are downloaded directly to your computer from the ad agency, preventing Gaia from viewing the ads on your computer.
3. Ad agencies themselves sell thousands of different ads at any given moment, and do not screen them either. In fact, they, too, work with ad sales agencies, and usually serve ads from other companies.
4. The ad agencies determine which ad to show on each page according to:
a. Other content on the webpage.
b. Geographic characteristics (different campaigns for different geographic regions) - which is why people in Gaia's offices do not see the ads that are shown in the east coast of the US, or in other places in the world.
c. The surfing pattern that the computer is used for, including other websites (unless cookies are disabled or are regularly erased).
This means that if you see adult ads, you may want to erase cookies from your computer, and find who has been surfing adult websites using your computer. Cookies can track the different sites that your computer has visited, and many ad companies target their ads based on the type of sites that you visit.
5. Ads are delivered by a combination of Javascript, Flash, and redirects, which is why an extract from the html source code of the page is useless in determining which company served it up -- the source code only shows the first link in the chain, but we need to see the last link.

So in order for Gaia to be able to remove an ad that is served, we have to not only find which of the ad agencies that we work with served the ad, but also be able to tell them which ad it is.

Knowing which Gaia page it was served on is not enough. Having a screen shot is not enough either. Even looking at the source code of the page and extracting the line that shows the ad is not enough. What we need is the chain of requests, which you can see by using either Fiddler (IE) or Live HTTP Headers (Firefox).

Depending on your browser, the following posts will teach you how to extract and report this information.

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How to Report an ad - FOR WINDOWS

1. Download and install Fiddler2

2. Run fiddler.
START -> PROGRAMS -> Fiddler2. (The program should have it's own shortcut, not located within a folder.)

You should see this window:



From this point forward, Fiddler2 is now loaded and waiting to log any and all internet activity. Any and all programs that are accessing the internet will show up in the Fiddler2 interface window.

3. From this point onward, you can do one of two things to get the information needed to report a bad ad. If you still have the ad on the screen, then you can:

a.) Keep refreshing the ad until it shows up again, so that fiddler can track what network it came from. If the ad did not load, then be sure to CLEAR the entries (REMOVE -> ALL) before trying again.

OR

b.) You can CLICK on the ad and view where the ad goes. Fiddler will then be able to catch the traffic.

The reason why I give 2 options is that we at Gaia do not want to force or put anyone into a situation where they are viewing objectionable or inappropriate content. Therefore, I cannot in good conscience tell you to use method B to collect information. Although B would be easier than A, the safer (more time consuming) route is to use method A.

Once you've got the bad ad, DO NOT CLOSE THE BROWSER WINDOW, as we will need to take a screenshot of it later. When Fiddler is actually capturing traffic, you'll see a LOT of code shoot down the left window. This is a good sign.

After you've successfully grabbed the bad ad traffic, go ahead and stop fiddler from capturing traffic so as not to taint your hard work! Do this by either pressing F12 while inside the Fiddler window OR go to FILE -> uncheck CAPTURE TRAFFIC.



4. After you have captured Extract the right information:
The Fiddler window should look like this:



Now we have to save the information by exporting it. Go to EDIT -> SELECT ALL, then go to EDIT -> COPY -> TERSE SUMMARY.



That should contain the info we need about the ad! Before you do anything else (and erase the contents of your clipboard) go ahead and open up Notepad/Wordpad and PASTE the data there for safe temporary keeping.

5. Now take a screenshot of the inappropriate ad. Edit the screen shot if necessary. If there is any private data or inappropriate content, then either blot/blur it out, but try to keep the ad itself somewhat recognizable.

6. Use the following form when posting the information to this thread:

Gaia page:
Date / Time (and your timezone):
Reason for reporting:
Geographic information (Country / State / City is enough, if you're comfortable with sharing this information)
Fiddler output:

Screenshot of the ad

See a sample report here

Use the code brackets to surround your fiddler output in order to make it stand out. e.g. {code} and {/code}, but using [ instead of {

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How to Report an ad - FOR MACINTOSH
Screenshots possibly pending.

The following is current information for OSX 10.5.8 and Safari Version 5.0.6, build 5533.22.3.

1. Open Inspect Element.
Right click on an empty spot on the page. Inspect Element should be the last option.

2. Find the page's source code in the Resources tab.
Under Resources, look at Frame -> (page URL) -> Stylesheets; there should be a sheet labelled (page URL.)

(Page URL) will look something like this, for this page:
forum/bug-report-technical-support/report-inappropriate-ads-on-gaia/t.41805411_4/

3. Find the ad's URL.
Using Inspect's search option, search for "gaia-ad"; its location will vary by page. There should be an &iframe& tag after it; the ad's URL will be between the &iframe& and &/iframe&.

For this thread, it should look something like this:

&iframe src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N5243/adi/gaia.forums.gaiaonline/bugreporttechnicalsupport.thread;ag=35;gd=f;dn=0;tile=1;sz=300x250;v=0;ord=1327359768" name="ad" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"&
&script type="text/javascript\" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N5243/adj/gaia.forums.gaiaonline/bugreporttechnicalsupport.thread;ag=35;gd=f;dn=0;tile=1;sz=300x250;v=0;ord=1327359768"&&/script&
<noscript><a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N5243/jump/gaia.forums.gaiaonline/bugreporttechnicalsupport.thread;ag=35;gd=f;dn=0;tile=1;sz=300x250;v=0;ord=1327359768"><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N5243/ad/gaia.forums.gaiaonline/bugreporttechnicalsupport.thread;ag=35;gd=f;dn=0;tile=1;sz=300x250;v=0;ord=1327359768" alt="Advertisement" width="300" height="250" border="0" /></a></noscript>
&/iframe&

4. Copy whatever is within the &iframe& tag.
Paste it to TextEdit (or another text editor.)


5. Get a screenshot of the ad.
Grab is good for this:

• Make sure the ad's page is showing.
  
• Click your Grab icon.
  
• Choose Capture -> Selection, or press Shift + Command + A.
  
• Hold click and drag a box over the ad.
  
• When a window opens up with the ad, save it. This will go into TIFF file format.
  
• Open the file in iPhoto.
  
• Export it to JPEG or PNG format.
  
• Upload the image.
  
  6. Fill out the form!
  
  
  Gaia page:
  Date / Time (and your timezone):
  Reason for reporting:
  Geographic information (Country / State / City is enough, if you're comfortable with sharing this information)
  What is in the iframe tags:
  
  And the screenshot!
  
  Be sure to put the iframe contents into code tags, as for the example above. 3nodding

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Gaia Needs Your Help to Get Rid of Inappropriate Ads!


Edmund wants you!

(art by warrior_of_boognish)

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