Like many sites this is partly supported by companies placing advertisements in the margins of the Home and other pages.
Some are eerily local to you as user: one waffles about "[My town's name] Opticians... " apparently threatened by some technical development in their trade. I saw one regularly on EP, telling me things like "Sarah lives four miles from you" - it was a lie of course, but it opened a dating-site that showed it knew roughly I live, within perhaps 50 miles anyway. The advertising-agencies use your approximate location bought or gleaned from the web-site.
One though, advertised a "Simple trick to see if you've ever had PPI" (Payment Protection Insurance, usually for mortgages.) I know I do not, and when I did I was not a victim of a miss-selling racket the banks ran for a while, but I selected it out of curiosity. My security software 'Bulldog' promptly leapt up, snarled at it as dangerous, and blocked it.
Possibly, Bulldog is very wary of anything mentioning money on non-https web-sites even where genuine. Sometimes it blocks one forum I use perhaps due to it carrying private for-sale and trade-services ads., and sellers do occasionally do alert each other to responders clearly but clumsily attempting to use the private sales for fraud or money-laundering. So perhaps Bulldog is spotting these criminal attempts.
Or are there hidden dangers in some of these apparently safe advertisements and notices?
"The information we have indicate that this site:
- Might be used for deceptive or fraudulent purposes, such as stealing financial or other user account information. Such sites are often designed to appear as legitimate sites in order to mislead users into entering their credentials."
[Cut & paste quote}
I assume Taboola, which I guess is the agency buying advertising space on web-sites, watches material to ensure it is safe, not least to safeguard itself. Also, as I say, Bullguard does occasionally block innocent web-sites, perhaps triggered by certain words within the site, or by signs of the site being attacked - I don't know.
Interestingly, another advertisement in the same set on this screen-full for a similar service, but from "The Claims Guys", does open with the address redboxppi.co.uk. The ads for solar panels and eye treatment also work, but not the two games - though they probably won't run on my PC anyway. So my digital bulldog has sniffed out something in the iSmart Consumer Solutions site, but not in the other 4 ads or the 2 games.
I carried out a final test. I tried iSmart CS' digitalclam.co.uk address directly in the browser, and Bullguard blocked it from there, so has not discovered a weakness or fault in AM or Taboola. I suggest Taboola examines that web-site to see if it's been compromised. Given that iSmart is aimed at selling "compensation" deals to people miss-sold PPI, it's quite likely to attract hackers.
If it hasn't, perhaps Bullguard's being a bit over-sensitive!