ericjs wrote:

I don't know if you've given up, or looked lately, but on a recent trip to your site to download, I found it spammed more than ever with misleading download buttons in all the ads. One of them, amusingly, was for FileZilla.

Thanks for your message! No we have not given up ;-) It is just unbelievable these hundreds and hundreds of "spammy" ads! But we keep reviewing and blocking them, at least we try hard!

I don't know if you've given up, or looked lately, but on a recent trip to your site to download, I found it spammed more than ever with misleading download buttons in all the ads. One of them, amusingly, was for FileZilla.

It's good to know you're on it! It's probably endless trying to fight them. You would think google would have higher standards than that.

I don't remember what they were yesterday, but it seemed like almost every time I went to different page on your site I got another one with a big Download. Some of these are less blatant than others, and may not be trying to be intentionally misleading, but still... (I wonder if Google is targeting me this way because I came to your site yesterday with the word "download" in my search?).

Right now I'm getting: ADL Uncompressor, ManageEngine EventLog analyzer, (Ha, I just got one for WinSCP! With probably the smallest least intrusive download link, btw.). Now I'm starting to get ones that are more innocuous (including a different one for ManageEngine EventLog).

The ads are choosen by Google (AdSense). Whenever such misleading ad appear we add it to a black list. Can you provide us more details about this particular ad, so we can blacklist it?

I understand that winscp may need to have ads on their site. However does it need to allow ads which engage in sleazy practices like putting up a big download button (typically bigger and more prominent thsn the real download link you are looking for) to trick you into clicking that instead of the winscp download?

Yes, I know if you look carefully you can tell the difference, but it really is annoying that you have to hunt through the ad download links to find the real download link. And it IS an intentional tactic on their part. It's cheesy and it doesn't reflect well on winscp's image.

Eric