Sticky: 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: Internet Explorer 7
4. How to report an inappropriate ad: FireFox3
5. How to report an inappropriate ad: other browser (reserved)
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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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Reporting Inappropriate Ads - Internet Explorer 7

1. Download and install Fiddler
Fiddler will show up as a small icon on your browser:


2. Run fiddler, then reload the page with the inapprpriate ad.
(the ad you wish to report has to come up AFTER you've started Fiddler, otherwise we wouldn't be able to track it).

3. Extract the right information:
The Fiddler window should look like this:


Go to Edit - Select All, then go to Edit - Copy - Terse Summary.
That should contain the info we need about the ad!

4. Take a screenshot (edit it if neccessary, to remove pricate data and inapproriate contect)

5. Use the following form for posting the information:

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 (if the ad would violate Gaia's Terms of Service, please mask the inappropriate part)

See a sample report here

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Reporting Inappropriate Ads - FireFox 3

1. Download and install the live HTTP Headers addon for Firefox.
2. Go to Tools/Live HTTP Headers in Firefox. Click on the "Generator" tab. Check the "redirects" checkbox on the upper right and turn off the "images" checkbox a little below it.
3. Leave HTTP headers running, and then reload the page with the ad. The ad you wish to report has to come up AFTER you've started HTTP Headers, otherwise we wouldn't be able to track it.
4. Go back to the HTTP Headers dialog to the "Generators" tab, and "Save All" to a file. We'll need the contents of that file.
5. Take a screenshot (edit it if necessary, to remove private data and inappropriate content)
6. Use the following form for posting the information:

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)
HTTP Headers output

Screenshot of the ad (if the ad would violate Gaia's Terms of Service, please mask the inappropriate part)

Go here for a sample report.

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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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