Rogue Ad Hitting Gumtree Creates Distress Among Users

Rogue Ad Hitting Gumtree Creates Distress Among Users: Recently, Gumtree, a site offering classified ads and with a large community around it, has been affected by a rogue ad that contained potentially malicious software.

Upon trying to access the website, users would be warned by the defense mechanisms in the web browser that the page contained malware. Worry that the website suffered a security breach soon spread on Facebook.

According to the site representatives, the risk did not come from Gumtree and the customer data was not compromised, because the service was not hacked. “Gumtree has not had any form of security breach,” a post on Facebook announced.

According to another message on the company’s social network account, the issue has been resolved by the technical team and users should have no trouble browsing the ads.

It appears that the problem was caused by a third party ad that had been published on the website, which contained malicious content. According to the available documentation, Gumtree uses “third-party ad-serving technologies, to serve ads,” which makes the malvertising scenario possible.

Gumtree was launched in 2007 in Australia and has extended its services to 76 cities in 11 countries. It is designed for people who want to move or have just arrived in a community and need help with getting to meet new people or with accommodation and employment.