Vimeo Iframe injecting adware?

Question

I have uBlock origin installed (basically adBlock) and started noticing some weird requests blocked on my console:

I checked up on what "scorecardresearch" was and turns out its a less than trustworthy source of adware/possibly malware.

Since I was getting isolated incidents on my website, I dove into my source code and noticed that it was being requested by the Vimeo video iframes (I confirmed this by removing them all and the requests stopped).

Unfortunately, these are an important part of our website. Does anyone know why/how Vimeo iframes are causing this problem?

Answer 1

scorecardresearch.com is a tracking service.

The reason it is associated with malware is because it is owned by comScore, who also operate the MarketScore spyware (aka Netsetter, Relevant Knowledge, PremierOpinion, PermissionResearch, MySHCCommunity). In the past, MarketScore was stealthily bundled with third-party applications such as file-sharing apps, leading to it being considered unwanted and generally malicious.

This particular tracking site is widespread on major sites and has not itself been seen to spread malware. Vimeo are unlikely to know or care about comScore's background in unsolicited commercial software. (Let's face it, most of the major players in online advertising have some pretty shady stuff in their pasts.)

Generally if you want to have video on your site but don't want a third party tracking your users across sites, you'll have to host the video yourself.