If you’re seeing advertising where it shouldn’t be – like in the Wikipedia, you’ve been injected. The Chrome Extension “I Want This” is one of the tainted extensions. It’s easy to check for (Wrench>Tools>Extensions). I checked my Chrome and Comodo Dragon, and these aren’t injected.
Similarly, you can check your Firefox (Orange Rectangle>Add ons>Extensions), IE (Tools>Manage add-ons>Toolbars and Extensions).
So, if you see advertisements on the Wikipedia, you need to delve deeper. Sorry. What else could be going on?
- You are not on the official Wikipedia.org website, but on a copy cat site that is displaying Wikipedia contents and ads
- You are in a public Internet cafe, hotel, or any other public network where your access is limited. It can happen that ads are injected while you are connected to the network, which would not make it a issue of your computer, but of the network you are connected to. Sometimes, it may be enough to connect to Wikipedia via https instead to get rid of the ads, other times, you may want to try virtual private networks.
- Last but not least your ISP may also be injecting ads into websites you visit. A vpn may help in this case as well.
- http://www.ghacks.net/2012/05/17/ads-on-wikipedia-its-malware/?_m=3n%2e0038%2e522%2ehj0ao01hy5%2ej6j
So then what do you do? Scan with your security software and add a Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Ad-Aware scan – both have free editions. That’s what Phillipe Beaudette (Wikipedia’s Director of Community Advocacy) recommends.
“https browsing” may make the problem disappear, but won’t solve it.
Sources:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/05/14/ads-on-wikipedia-your-computer-infected-malware/
http://www.ghacks.net/2012/05/17/ads-on-wikipedia-its-malware/?_m=3n%2e0038%2e522%2ehj0ao01hy5%2ej6j