Unholy Triangle Report

From Piracy to Ads to Ransomware: How Illicit Actors Use Digital Ads on Piracy Sites to Profit by Harming Internet Users

Visitors to piracy sites are bombarded with malicious ads that use scare tactics to trick them into downloading malware, including ransomware that takes over files to force victims to pay to regain access, a joint investigation by the Digital Citizens Alliance, White Bullet, and Unit 221B has found. The investigation also found that these malicious ads, called malvertising, are often enabled by ad intermediary companies that promote scare tactics and other dubious means to trick or entice users to click on dangerous ads. 

Unholy Triangle: A look a movie piracy sites and the problems they cause for consumers using them.

Security researchers took a look at how much trouble a piracy site could create users trying to watch movies for free. What they found put users' files at risk and made bad guys hundreds of millions in return.

Digital Citizens reached out to PropellerAds for comment on the report’s finding. The company’s full response is below:

“Thank you for contacting us, we appreciate your request of our comments before the publication. It is unfortunate that you only gave us two days to respond, but we address your inquiries below. First, we would like to commend your effort to combat piracy and malware threats. Propeller Ads profoundly supports any effort in identifying and combating piracy as also protecting the rights of legal owners. In fact, Propeller Ads is proud of its active efforts to prevent its network from being used for any fraudulent or illegal activity.  

Surprisingly and most, unfortunately, our endeavors do not seem to reach the DCA, although we have repeatedly publicly emphasized the maltreatment of Propeller Ads and the misinformation and lack of validity in DCA’S previous researches/reports/results/publications. Indeed, the short lead-time you gave us and the wording of your inquiry suggests that DCA has already made up its mind about Propeller Ads and is not simply looking to fit facts into a pre-determined conclusion. We hope by this letter to correct DCA’s misunderstanding of Propeller Ads business practices.    

1) We most certainly consider all malware advertising alerting users strictly prohibited and therefore constantly monitor our systems, ban all accounts and stop all cooperation with the relevant infringing parties.  

2) The term ‘Scary’ is an online advertising industry term of art and is a common name describing a category of creatives used by antiviruses, cleaners and other utilities of such kind to protect the device of a user. It does not mean in any way that these creatives are used to mislead users or that such creatives are fraudulent. ‘Malware threats’ and our interpretation and use of the term ‘Scary’ have nothing in common. Indeed, large privacy protection & antivirus vendors use “scary” type of on-line advertising when advertising its anti-virus software. Propeller Ads strictly prohibits all campaigns that contain malware, it constantly performs high quality checks and if necessary permanently bans all relevant accounts by terminating business dealings with the relevant infringing parties, but not only ad campaign suspend.  

3) Please do not expect us to have a comment on your research’s findings if we have never received the research or the basis of its findings. Propeller maintains its own abuse report webpage https://abuse.propellerads.com/, an online accessible tool publicly available for anyone who wishes to report an allegedly infringement incident. Nevertheless, we have never received a complaint, neither through the online tool nor via contact email address, from anyone in relation to the indicated 26% of malvertising ads on piracy sites.   With the above being said, we would like to indicate that the DCA’s reports and publications have been on all previous occasions deceitful, based on unconfirmed and farfetched allegations, highly defamatory and malicious to the reputation of Propeller Ads. We caution you against continuing this practice in the future.  

Propeller Ads is a company providing the highest quality of advertising services having its utmost priority the respect, safety and protection of its clients and end users rights, this being one of the major reasons it is the daily choice of hundreds of thousands of users. It constantly redefines its operations based on international legal standards, it upgrades its policies, licenses and security tools to be stricter, more reliable and resistant, it applies system penetration tests and enhances its technics to detect and prevent malware activities faster than the accepted medium market standards, safeguarding to the highest extend possible the rights of its clients and users worldwide.  

Over and above, Propeller Ads has at all times fairly responded and successfully excluded itself from all publications, inquiries, reports that came across it which may have questioned its provision of services in any way, the DCA’s included. Yet, the DCA keeps attacking us with absolutely no reasonable explanation or adequate proof. The fact that Propeller Ads is one of the big players in the advertising market does not automatically imply that it facilitates copyright infringement. 

In our regard, the DCA appears to adopt the role of a supervisory body drawing conclusions without adequate investigation and based on mere allegation, damaging our reputation, our business and the advertising market itself. In its effort to fight illegality in its whole, the DCA infringes our adversarial rights to justice and violates our basic rights to presumption of innocence, breaches and abuses our rights in such a fundamental and severe level that automatically renders itself the ultimate offender and violator.  

We really hope that this reply will enlighten you and DCA as to the transparency and legitimacy of our operations. We most certainly wish to believe in the honest intentions of your reports/publications and therefore kindly ask you to reconsider their content. Moreover, we invite you to contact Propeller Ads directly and provide your reports for review before publication, giving an honest opportunity to overruling and withdrawing.  This email is not intended to constitute, nor shall it be deemed to constitute, a full statement of all facts, rights or claims relating to this matter, nor is it intended, nor shall it be construed as a waiver, release or relinquishment of any defenses, rights or remedies available, whether legal or equitable, all of which are hereby expressly reserved. We hereby reserve our rights to any available means of protection.”