White Bullet Study Reveals that 20% of Ads on Pirate Websites Place Consumers at Risk

The cybersecurity and IP protection company also publishes a series of Malware definitions, to broaden understanding of this growing problem

A study conducted by cybersecurity and IP protection expert, White Bullet, has revealed that 20% of ads on pirate websites globally present a threat for consumers, with a high volume of ‘malvertising’ and fraud (13%) and adult content (7%) found within them.

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The latest stats from its Intellectual Property Infringement Platform (IPIP), IPIP, uncovered over 8 billion malvertising ad impressions found globally in the last 12 months, alone.

What’s more, in a worrying trend, the last quarter of 2020 saw an 82% increase in malvertising on pirate domains; possibly down to criminals trying to capitalise on increased online activity as a result of lockdowns around the world.

“Our study found that France and Germany have some of the highest volumes of malvertising in the world – over double the UK volumes – while in Indonesia, one third of advertising on pirate sites is malvertising,” warns Peter Szyszko, CEO, White Bullet.

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White Bullet offers services to make the job of detecting fraudulent content easier. It helps to combat traditional website piracy and emerging threats, with its IPIP platform leveraging AI and machine learning in order to uncover and assess IP-infringing content, across multiple digital ecosystems. It harvests data from billions of webpages and over 50 app stores worldwide, thereby uncovering the financial impact of this wide-scale and global problem.

White Bullet has captured malvertising on pirate websites ranging from adware, PUPs (potentially unwanted programmes that inject toolbars and pop-up ads) and browser hijackers, to keyloggers tracking keyboard actions, and trojans. 

“As we can see, a growing vocabulary is needed in order to communicate the wide-ranging implications of such costly criminal activity online,” adds Szyszko.

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