Triond Malware Disaster

In a Sept. 8, 2010, statement on the official Triond blog, content producers were informed that many of the sites hosted by Triond were inadvertently spreading malware. Triond, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, stated that:

"Preliminary investigation of the matter suggests that a malware distributor was somehow able to sneak in via one of the advertising networks that we work with. Since we allocate ad space to this network on almost all of our websites, most of them were affected. We'd like to stress that we're not in the business of distributing malware or anything like it. It is that advertising network that's been the 'gateway' for this malware to appear on our websites and of course we didn't know anything about it and wouldn't allow it to happen if we did."

Triond worked diligently and immediately to remove the offending malware that was hidden in an ad (some suspect it was an Acai berry ad) and to take their sites off the malicious lists of Google, Google Chrome, and Firefox. However, the damage was already done.

Several content producers reported in the comments of the post that their page numbers went down significantly. Some complained that friends would no longer read their articles after being infected, and a few others were even banned or chastised by local online communities where they would post their relevant articles.

Triond differs from Associated Content in that there is no up front payments for articles. Page view payments are different depending on which site the article is posted (and no content producer knows for certain what the exact formula is). I originally chose Triond over Associated Content because articles are approved much faster (within one to two business days, as opposed to one to two weeks), however, I now regret this decision.

The ads at Triond have become increasingly more aggressive, especially the annoying videos that overtake my articles. I personally hate this type of advertising, and I finally admitted to myself a month ago that I would never read any of my articles on Triond simply because of the ad content.

For me, the loss of credibility was the final straw. Although my articles at Triond were nothing to be terribly proud of, I enjoyed watching my page views go up and receiving my monthly payouts. And while the Triond team worked diligently to resolve the malware issue as soon as possible, it reminded me of the expression "locking the barn door after the horse has ran away."

In summation, while this blunder by Triond probably won't cause the website to shut down, it will certainly impact future submissions by current content producers. The forums are awash with complaints about decreased page views, and it appears that several members are indeed leaving the site permanently.

UPDATE: Sept. 9, 2010: The Triond blog reported this morning that "we are happy to report that all of our websites have now been restored to a 'white label' with Google. This means that Google has verified that each and every one of our websites is safe for browsing, and is removing the malware warnings." The blog further stated that malware warnings would still show up on Google search results for an unspecified period of time.

The post then stated that content producers would receive some sort of compensation for the lost revenue, but that they had yet to decide on the type of compensation.

"Firefox malware issues", Triond blog.
"Malware warning updates", Triond blog.