I got an email yesterday asking me about an advertisement found on my website.

First of all, I would like to make it clear that I am not responsible for placing any banner-sized advertise­ments on my website. The advertisement you see at the top-right corner is controlled by Google Adsense, and they decide what advertisements to put in that spot.

That being said, that also means that I do not personally support or endorse any advertisements ap­pear­ing in that ad zone.

The email that was sent to me yesterday asked me if the FLV player being advertised in that banner was a legitimate and reliable flash player. My answer to this is that I don’t know. According to the terms and conditions of Google Adsense, I am never permitted to ever click on any of the advertisements that appear on my website. In addition, even if I were to have permission to click on my own ads, I would not go through each one and test it out to see if it was a good website.

Thus, my word of advice for advertisements on my web­site is to be cautious when visiting other websites. If you think that something is suspicious on a website that shows up after clicking on one of my ads, leave it imme­diately and don’t download anything from it.

Also, make sure you have active and updated anti-virus software installed and running on your compu­ter.

As for that specific advertisement, if you really need a player for FLV files, I recommend getting VLC Media Player. Not only is it free, it is also open-source and rep­utable. I use VLC Media Player for playing pretty much all my video files. Even when I download a video in a file format with which I’m unfamiliar, VLC usually figures out a way to play it.

Yes, supporting VLC means there are going to be less people who click on that advertisement shown in the screenshot above if it ever appears again as a real advertisement, but I’d rather have my readers be safe than make a couple extra dollars off a malicious website’s ads.