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I've noticed calls coming from my PC to the url PLACEIMPMACROHERE when accessing certain websites in Chrome - usually after they've been open for awhile.
I also see when looking at Google that this is happening with many websites as they've created pages for it -- https://www.google.com/#q=placeimpmacrohere
What is PLACEIMPMACROHERE and is it something to worry about?
Tom
Posted 2013-12-30T21:44:45.210
Reputation: 23
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There is very little information about this that I could find, other than what seems to be autogenerated URLs (related question on SO).
I found it mentioned here though. The site allows viewing and downloading some JavaScript (I have no idea what it's for, actually) that includes the term PLACEIMPMACROHERE and appears to be related to the "Turn" advertising network. When I opened the URL mentioned on the site though, the script was completely different, so it's not a sure match.
I suggest you install Ghostery in your browser (which is probably a good idea anyway) and disable Turn ads to see whether that resolves the issue.
Daniel Beck
Posted 2013-12-30T21:44:45.210
Reputation: 98 421
Amusing that the url is bs.serving-sys.com/BurstingPipe/adServer.bs. :-D – Synetech – 2013-12-30T22:01:47.677
Thank you, I guess that was the pattern - those sites were running ads. It must have been loading as some third party ads through Adsense displaying on those sites. – Tom – 2013-12-30T22:13:18.963
It doesn’t look good. It looks like that could potentially be part of some malware kit and people who use it forget to replace the variables. Is there any pattern to which websites this happens with? Have you tried disabling any third-party plugins and extensions (and of course restarting Chrome) to see if it still happens? Where did you see the calls coming from your system, a packet-sniffer? – Synetech – 2013-12-30T21:53:28.647
I've seen no pattern other than it happened to be on sites that were open for some time. I was doing some unrelated programming work last night and had fiddler running and chrome was open.. when I woke up I saw this unusual called filtered by PLACEIMPMACROHERE and noticed there were a handful of these calls overnight.. typed it into google and saw that tens of thousands of pages came up with PLACEIMPMACROHERE. I have not seen it since. – Tom – 2013-12-30T21:58:19.873
Wow, you can't even look that up on Google without hitting all the sites who added it, to accommodate anyone who is searching it (which is useless). Only reference i found is someone who saw his site got hit by browser adding this and wanted to block it. It might be some malware.
– Rik – 2013-12-30T22:02:55.497