Seeing ads on Wikipedia? You may have malware

Wikipedia has issued a warning to its many millions of daily visitors that if they are seeing commercial adverts on its webpages, that it may be an indication of a malware infection on the user’s computer.

Criminals aren’t shy of earning affiliate cash by injecting unwanted adverts into webpages or redirecting users to sites or search results that innocent users didn’t mean to visit.

Despite its colossal popularity, Wikipedia has always resisted putting ads on its pages. The site prefers to ask the public for donations and runs fund-raising campaigns from time-to-time.

As Wikipedia explains in its official blog:

We never run ads on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is funded by more than a million donors, who give an average donation of less than 30 dollars. We run fundraising appeals, usually at the end of the year. If you’re…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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