"it's awful news for webmasters but people browsing the webs urely don't want to see ads and now don't have to worry about the risk of having them there."

There is no evidence to support the assertion that readers seeking information or entertainment via the Web "don't want to see ads." There is, however, plenty of evidence that they don't much want to pay for Web content. There being no free lunch, the price of professional and independently-produced content is advertising.

Bugs like this are almost unforgivable, not because of the short term revenue loss to websites and Google (we'll get over it), but because it scares users for no good reason and hurts the reputations of innocent websites. Avoiding bad stuff on the Internet is already hard enough for a lot of users and every "malicious stuff" alert from their virus software makes them even more afraid of the Internet. False positives only exasperate the problem. In this case, how hard would have it have been to test the update out by surfing the web some and at least making sure it isn't throwing false positives for common stuff (e.g. AdSense).

This was sloppy work on Kaspersky's part, especially since it isn't the first time that they did this.

According to The Register:

The Adsense cockup happened just hours after the bit.ly web address shortening service was wrongly added to Kaspersky's blocklist en masse as links to phishing sites.

Sorry, but Google has no actual right to display AdSense ads in a personal browser, it either displays or it doesn't, they can't force you to see them or force anyone to stop blocking them.

Exactly. Thank you Bill.

And further because it bears repeating...

I'm not happy about losing revenue either but I'd also not be happy if corporate giants with deep pockets started making legislation by litigation.

My feelings exactly. There is no inherent legal right to show ads on a website.

When someone comes up with a way to block ad serving, it's now on the ad server to block the block.

And then they'll block the block that blocks.. and then they'll block the block that blocks the block that tried to block....

Whew.. I'm worn out already...

because it scares users for no good reason and hurts the reputations of innocent websites

Exactly, that's where the storm will come from.

I'm sure I'll have visitors and advertisers screaming at me for "having a virus" before the day is over.

The problem is how many people will go away and never come back because they think you run a garbage site not realizing it's AdSense and Kaspersky at odds with each other today and your web site is perfectly fine.

It's a sad day when I have to be thankful most surfers use Symantec's AV.

To further HuskyPup's find...

Kaspersky update slaps Trojan warning on Google AdSense
[theregister.co.uk...]

Whew, I guess there is a zero-tolerance at play when it comes to false-positives? I don't know about you but I'm a little more forgiving in this instance. Since I was recently hit with malware, I'll take a false-positive over a false-negative any day! :)

So basically, an internet security company cannot correctly id one of the most used pieces of code in the universe.

That's' like... Googlebot could not read html anymore.

Maybe one day Kaspersky staff decides to get rid of that "nasty blood thingy" in their bodies.

If I have to choose between clicking couple of times to get rid of occasional Trojan or disabling half of the Internet, I'm facing pretty easy choice...

Problem solved, it was a false positive...
[forum.kaspersky.com...]

I'll take a false-positive over a false-negative any day!

Would your visitors feel the same ?

pageoneresults is not like the rest of us.

(I was going to say more, but decided this was enough)

I have a Mac, have always had a Mac and probably will always have a Mac. As far as i know, Kaspersky is a chess player from Russia.

Nice cockup, per the Register, though.

I don't get it I have never heard of Kaspersky. Most people use the Norton or Mcafee or AVG. I seriously doubt they could do anything to really affect adsense income.

This sounds more like a marketing ploy. I'm sure many people on this forum reading this are just now hearing about Kaspersky for the first time. They sure fooled WebmasterWorld to get them some nice free advertisement.

Perhaps this is the answer to this ...
[webmasterworld.com...]

On one of my site I placed some code that will redirect the user if it not able to load the ads (someone said this is not right, i don't know).
Anyway, many users contact me and tell me they would like to disable that ad blocker but they don't know how, I think in many cases this is Kaspersky. Kaspersky should disable that thing.

I ran Kaspersky straight out of the box all last year and saw plenty of AdSense ads.

But it really slowed down my machine at times.

Kaspersky has a lower market share - but I only have numbers from 2006... yet from these numbers they should be below 8% of over-all Antivirus installations... so, if you revenue dropped more than 8%, I would not blame it on this incident...

BTW: in December I was finally able to de-install AdSense on most of my pages without dropping in revenue! There are alternatives out there!

Kaspersky has been around (and a well respected name in antivirus) for years; at least since the late 90's. Used to be a much more tech-oriented, less pretty friendly user GUI type. We used to use a server version of it in the old days. Haven't ever used the workstation / desktop version. But they're no newcomer trying for a marketing ploy, I can assure you.

Reading this - it looks like a war zone to me!
Haven't used any anti-virus in 6 years and living in peace!
cheers

"Haven't used any anti-virus in 6 years and living in peace!"

Well lak12 you are probably just one of the tens of thousands of computer users who have infected computers, unless of course you are using linux.

If you are using Windows then I suggest you use one of the free online anti-virus tools to check your computer (from a legitimate company), you will probably be horrified at the amount of viruses and trojans on your computer.

Yeah confusing my Kaspersky is throwing these at me now I know what it is! thanks for the thread

With that logic Google should proceed against all ad blockers as well which deliberately targets Adsense.

No, this isn't about blocking ads. It's about being falsely accused of malware.