unwanted and unauthorized ads on my site!

[jworld2]

Hey I hope this is in the right section. If not, sorry.

My website - jworld2.sitesled.com (http://jworld2.sitesled.com), and I think all the other html pages hosted on my server account have unauthorized ads placed on them. If you click the link you can see it. It is the only ad on the site.

Viewing the page source, I found some html that I did not put there-

<BR><BR>
<BR><BR>
<CENTER>
<script language='JavaScript' type='text/javascript' src='http://www.wecounthits.com/process/adengine/adx.js'></script>
<script language='JavaScript' type='text/javascript'>
<!--
if (!document.phpAds_used) document.phpAds_used = ',';
phpAds_random = new String (Math.random()); phpAds_random = phpAds_random.substring(2,11);

document.write ("<" + "script language='JavaScript' type='text/javascript' src='");
document.write ("http://www.wecounthits.com/process/adengine/adjs.php?n=" + phpAds_random);
document.write ("&what=zone:44");
document.write ("&exclude=" + document.phpAds_used);
if (document.referrer)
document.write ("&referer=" + escape(document.referrer));
document.write ("'><" + "/script>");
//-->
</script><noscript><a href='http://www.wecounthits.com/process/adengine/adclick.php?n=aa7be145' target='_blank'><img src='http://www.wecounthits.com/process/adengine/adview.php?what=zone:44&n=aa7be145' border='0' alt=''></a></noscript>
</CENTER>


I tested this code and figured out that it is indeed this that created the ads on my site. Right clicking on the ad and going to properties, in the address section, I found a url that resembled this- http://b1.adbrite.com/iads/22644.gif. I say it only resembled that because the ads are not always the same and the url may be slightly different. But the url always says "adbrite" in it. I searched about adbrite and it seems to be a professional ad placing service.

You can see the url for wecounthits.com. I went to that site and it is a statcounting site that says it does not put ads on people's sites. I put in the url http://www.wecounthits.com/process/adengine from above. If you click on that link, you go to a page that says welcome to phpAdsNew, which I found out is now Openads. That is as far as I got into finding the source of the ads.

I may just be going nowhere here, but I was hoping that somebody knows anymore about this. It may just be the work of hackers. I was also hoping that there would be a way to get rid of the ads without having to upload all of the html files over again. Thank you for your patience and help!

[_Aerospace_Eng_]

Have you contacted your web host about this? It seems like this might either be them starting to add ads to their pages or someone has compromised their server.

[whizard]

It seems as if there is a sudden flood of people saying that they are finding unexpected things in their source code... I wonder if there is some new hacking technique?

Dan

[CFMaBiSmAd]

Viewing the page sourceIs the information in your post based on using a browser's "view source" or is the bad code actually contained in the source files on the server?

[jworld2]

well the source is from the browser view source, but from what I've gathered, I think my server is now putting ads on the sites. I will still check around for more info, but I think that is what's going on. If that is the case though, they really should have notified people first, and also the ads are right in the middle of things. They should have placed them out of the way.

[freelanceCMS]

I'd start complaining quickly about that, especially because your paying not to have the annoying advertisements on your page, of course, unless they are your own ads...

[CFMaBiSmAd]

His host is a free hosting service.

[Pennimus]

Yeah, unfortunately you get what you pay for. I know that host states they don't put ads on sites hosted with them, but it's their server... they can basically do whatever the hell they like.

With shared hosting costing as little as it does these days I'm surprised that anyone still uses these free hosting services (especially when it's an actual company website :confused: ).

The bottom line is if you want peace of mind you need only shell out a few bucks/quid per month.

[oracleguy]

I'd imagine the ads are being placed into the pages when the web server sends them to the client. And since you are using a free host, if they've decided to do that, there isn't really anything you can do about it except switch hosts. And I have to agree with the above post, hosting is fairly cheap and then you get no ads so that is something you should definitely look into.

And discussion about removing ads that free hosts add into the pages through other means is off limits.