Questions about the Antishock extension

Along with useful ads, there are also annoying, unpleasant or even “dangerous” banner ads on the internet. They may contain pornographic images, lead to fraudulent sites, or suggest that users download software that is infected with viruses. These type of ads cheapen the internet services they are displayed on in the eyes of users and breed distrust toward online ads as a whole.

Yandex is constantly developing tools to improve the internet environment and protect users from malicious and/or useless content such as spam, viruses, doorway sites, fraudulent pages, and "adult" content on sites serving a general audience. For example, Yandex's search engine uses a ranking mechanism that gives preference to pages that don't contain harmful or unpleasant ads. Sites containing these types of negative banners are found in lower positions within the search results.

Antishock is yet another Yandex tool that protects users from “bad” banner ads.

Antishock considers the following types of banners to be harmful or shocking:

• Erotic and pornographic ads
  Banners with erotic or pornographic images or ads for "adult" sites. These ads are blocked on all sites except those where they match the site topic.

• Aggressive and shocking ads
  Banners with graphic images of disasters, survivors of violence, creepy characters from horror movies, worms and parasites, diseases and deformities, infected organs and ulcers, and grossly obese people. Close-up drawings and photos of private parts and childbirth. Ads with messages about the death of celebrities or predicting the end of the world.

• Intrusive and annoying ads
  Animated flashing banners. Windows and tabs with ads that appear when clicking a video or an empty space on the page, or when trying to close ads.

• SMS fraud advertising
  Banners that advertise sites related to SMS fraud. Banners faking messages from social media. Banners promising lottery winnings, prizes for a milestone website visitor, access to a declassified database of personal information or the ability to delete your information from it, predictions, and so on.

• Dubious banners
  Banners with bogus messages about malware threats or available updates, or banners that mimic windows and other interface elements of the browser. Banners that promise money-making opportunities without explaining how. Suspicious ads offering treatment for diseases, rejuvenation and weight loss without indicating the medications, treatment method or clinic. Banners advertising celebrity diets, especially if they contain compromising images.

If a banner ad does not appear shocking but leads to a page with shocking content, Antishock considers it harmful and blocks the ad source.

• Ad-blocking extensions may block other elements of the website layout in addition to ads. This may ruin the site's appearance or functionality. Antishock doesn't affect a site's functionality.
• Other extensions may block all banner ads with no exception. This results in lost income for web resources that are only able to function thanks to revenue from normal ads. That is why web resources request that users not use ad-blocking extensions. Antishock only blocks banners that its algorithm identifies as harmful or shocking and does not prevent display of other ads.

Write to Yandex Browser support via the form. Include a link to your site and the blocked banners in your message. Please also explain why you think the blocked ads are not malicious or shocking.

To prevent a shocking banner from displaying:

1. Right-click the ad.
2. Select Complain about ad in the context menu.

After that, the banner will disappear and no longer display in Yandex Browser. A message about the shocking banner will be sent to Yandex, and if there are a lot of these messages, the ad source may be blocked for all users.

Antishock was not designed to target specific advertisers or networks; its purpose is to protect users from malicious and shocking ads. If you care about your users and offer quality content, then try to find an appropriate “white” ad network that doesn't post shocking banners.

If you altered your ad network's content but still see its name in the blocked list, please write to us.

The Antishock algorithm takes many different factors into account. Your network won't be blocked based on a few shocking banners.

If you think your network was blocked by mistake, write to us.

We recommend putting the shocking advertising in a separate independent section. Then Antishock will not block normal ad sources.

The Antishock algorithm very rarely finds shocking ads and banners among those served by Yandex.Direct and other major ad networks. This is primarily because ad content is automatically moderated and then selectively checked manually. If an ad network carefully moderates its ads, Antishock will not block it.