ExBlog

Hacked by Youtube

More and more people use browsers with build-in adblockers or browser-extensions for blocking ads.

I just noticed that embedded videos are not only being blocked when you use an adblocker but cause 404-errors for every ad that's on it because the ad-blocker makes the browser refuse these requests, this causes 4 failed pageloads per video, I had two videos and I noticed in a request - tracking script (that I wrote and use) that 8 x googleads (doubleclick etc.) were blocked.

My blog started loading slowly and I tracked down the reason: with every pageload 8 errorpages are being requested as well which causes 9 pageviews on every load instead of just 1.

Click "More" (below) to continue reading

The solution:

Next to that 4 textfiles named f.txt were blocked, I downloaded one and looking at the content I first thought my blog was hacked, this is the content:

)]}' {"id":"ANyPxKrjZcMaDKFMOtTKWUCjtP9Muwx3lVVupPOFmbPQZ6HVPoxPXg0MPMHMfdR8bLT2DvCx5VED","type":0}

The first four characters set all my alarm-lights to red... But it was no hacker, it was Youtube itself, when I took down the embeds these files were gone too.

How to embed a video in another way I do not know, I will take a screenshot and place an image which I link to the video like I did in this post, that's the safest solution.

One more thing: remember that because you are loading 3rd party-trackers by embedding these Youtube-videos you also need a user-consent script. I just dumped all external trackers ánd the consent-script two weeks ago and I am not going to put one back up just because I have added some videos...

One more entrance blocked for the website-hacking money-hungy wolves who do not care one bit about you and your website, just their bankaccounts, that's all that matters to them. This is one from me: 🖕