Seeing ads in Wikipedia means it’s a malware/adware! Beware!
Wikipedia is undoubtedly (and arguably) the largest encyclopedia available on Earth…err…Internet. This is a major target for many hackers and have also been in the news for quite a many times. This post will discuss and show a way of one such instance where in a user will see ads on Wikipedia. Please note: if you are using https (secured) version of Wikipedia, then ads may not show up, suppressing the malware problem, but not eradicating it.
For those who have been using Wikipedia but have never observed, the website don’t sell ads. Except for some fundraising activities when required. However, there are some unscrupulous websites that inject their malware and adware on to your computer stealthily. This shows up ads on certain websites – however we’ll not be able to find them. But Wikipedia is an information repository done for the people by the people, with a ‘no-ads’ philosophy. So why is there an ad on my Wikipedia page? That exactly means that your computer is infected with a malware or an adware.
Source: If you’re seeing ads on Wikipedia, your computer is probably infected with malware
Here’s how to remove this:
It’s simple. This usually installs itself as a browser extension. For eg. if you are using Chrome, then go to your Extensions by going through the Settings menu, or by simply typing in chrome://extensions/ in your browser’s address bar. Remove the extension that calls itself as ‘i want this’. This should take care of it.
Alternatively, you may also want to run a quick malware scan on your computer to ensure that no other malware exists.
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