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> I'm not advertising on my blogs Perhaps you should, I enjoyed finding stuff like this : https://danshumway.com/blog/gamasutra-vulnerabilities/ https://danshu

> I'm not advertising on my blogs Perhaps you should, I enjoyed finding stuff like this : https://danshumway.com/blog/gamasutra-vulnerabilities/ https://danshumway.com/blog/gamasutra-vulnerabilities/

saagarjha 7y ago
Perhaps they enjoy not having their website marred by online advertisements?
danShumway 7y ago
I'm really glad you enjoyed the article :) I realize that there are some ways that people serve ads where they vet them and make sure they're not tracking readers. But even if it was easy to set something like that up, I wouldn't feel good running sponsored content or ads on my platforms -- it's not the relationship I want to have with my readers. I take a much more negative view of ads than most other people I know. I don't just dislike ads that track users or that are poorly vetted. I dislike the psychological effect that ads have on people, I dislike the attention that they take, and I am very cautious of monetization schemes that are too closely integrated into the consumption of content. I can't think of a way I could run ads that wouldn't make reading my blog a worse experience. I know that's a somewhat extreme position to take. But it's not that advertising is inherently evil, it's just that it has more consequences and costs than most people realize. It's not only about privacy, security, or money. Given how large the current advertising industry is, where possible I try to block it and harm it indiscriminately. I encourage people to block ads even on websites that they would otherwise support. I think it would be good for society if the advertising industry got a lot smaller, even if that makes funding online content harder.
sduff 7y ago
Agree that that is an awesome article. Suggest you include the posting date on that page, as reading it, I wasn't sure how recent the info was. I was then shocked to find that these vulnerabilities were identified late last year. Some of these are security 101!
- danShumway 7y ago
  I didn't realize I wasn't attaching dates to posts, I will add those under the page headers. This is off-topic at this point, but I still stand by the ending to that post -- Gamasutra did reach out to me and did work with me for a little while to fix some of the issues, but eventually communication fell off. I didn't re-check to validate that the issues were fixed because I felt like I had done everything that could be expected of me at that point and because, honestly, the whole thing was really stressful. Even when companies are being nice (and UBM was really nice about the whole thing), public disclosure is still scary. You just hear horror stories. I still recommend that people be cautious using Gamasutra. I only wrote up specific vulnerabilities that I found accidentally, I didn't pen-test the site. My point with this article was that the site needs to be pen-tested. As far as I know, that's never happened.

> I'm not advertising on my blogs Perhaps you should, I enjoyed finding stuff like this : https://danshumway.com/blog/gamasutra-vulnerabilities/ https://danshumway.com/blog/gamasutra-vulnerabilities/

saagarjha 7y ago

Perhaps they enjoy not having their website marred by online advertisements?

danShumway 7y ago

I'm really glad you enjoyed the article :) I realize that there are some ways that people serve ads where they vet them and make sure they're not tracking readers. But even if it was easy to set something like that up, I wouldn't feel good running sponsored content or ads on my platforms -- it's not the relationship I want to have with my readers. I take a much more negative view of ads than most other people I know. I don't just dislike ads that track users or that are poorly vetted. I dislike the psychological effect that ads have on people, I dislike the attention that they take, and I am very cautious of monetization schemes that are too closely integrated into the consumption of content. I can't think of a way I could run ads that wouldn't make reading my blog a worse experience. I know that's a somewhat extreme position to take. But it's not that advertising is inherently evil, it's just that it has more consequences and costs than most people realize. It's not only about privacy, security, or money. Given how large the current advertising industry is, where possible I try to block it and harm it indiscriminately. I encourage people to block ads even on websites that they would otherwise support. I think it would be good for society if the advertising industry got a lot smaller, even if that makes funding online content harder.

sduff 7y ago

Agree that that is an awesome article. Suggest you include the posting date on that page, as reading it, I wasn't sure how recent the info was. I was then shocked to find that these vulnerabilities were identified late last year. Some of these are security 101!

danShumway 7y ago
I didn't realize I wasn't attaching dates to posts, I will add those under the page headers. This is off-topic at this point, but I still stand by the ending to that post -- Gamasutra did reach out to me and did work with me for a little while to fix some of the issues, but eventually communication fell off. I didn't re-check to validate that the issues were fixed because I felt like I had done everything that could be expected of me at that point and because, honestly, the whole thing was really stressful. Even when companies are being nice (and UBM was really nice about the whole thing), public disclosure is still scary. You just hear horror stories. I still recommend that people be cautious using Gamasutra. I only wrote up specific vulnerabilities that I found accidentally, I didn't pen-test the site. My point with this article was that the site needs to be pen-tested. As far as I know, that's never happened.