Adf.ly or just Ad Fly, is a well-known advertising network that has been around for quite some time. It is a tool that can be used website owners to monetise their content or just regular Internet users to make money by spreading links locked by ad.fly tool and make some extra bucks this way.
Ad Fly serves as a middle man between publishers of advertisements and those who want to monetise their links and web content. By the concept, it sounds like a really good idea for both parties. However, things are a bit different in reality. A blog post by 2-viruses.com addressed this problem, why in some cases Adf.ly should be considered as an adware infection. The line between legitimate tool and malicious infection is very thin and it seems like Ad Fly tends to cross it.
The biggest problem is that Adf.ly fails to control their partners. For instance, if you want to advertise using Google Adwords, Facebook ads or any other well-known advertising network, you will have to pass a strict control and verify for number of criteria. This way users are 100 percent sure that the content they receive through these providers are save to use. When speaking of Ad Fly, this lack of control is a really dark side. Various scammers and hackers can direct traffic to their websites of questionable reputation by using this tool. It’s not a secret that most of the time advertisements displayed by Ad Fly leads to offers to purchase viagra or other controversial services, that you wouldn’t normally encounter on legitimate websites.
Another feature that puts a question mark on this tool – it might stick to your web browsers without even asking your permission to do that. It can be also very difficult to get rid of it, therefore users struggle everyday, skipping ads and experiencing random redirects.
What’s our best advice in order to stay away from malware like this? Well, first of all, your computer should always be protected with reliable protection tools. There are tons of useful and free tools, such as AdBlock, CCleaner and so on – they will help you to protect your computer from unwanted content and spam, malicious files. Good anti-malware program should come useful as well. You should also be careful while browsing the Internet. Avoid websites that look suspicious and only download software from well-known and reliable sources.