Yes, it’s all from the ads. We’re getting into semantics now but I see what you mean.
No. No one is suggesting that. What has been suggested is using a different source for the ads or different types of ads. I am out of my depth to make specific suggestions but other people with experience in that area have done so. Those suggestions are probably worth a try.
Until recently, we have been able to buy guest subscriptions. I have bought a few for people over the years. This is no longer an option and we have been told that it won’t be one anymore. I don’t know how much revenue this brought in but that avenue is closed now.
I’ve only run across a few blocked sites in my internet lifetime, and I couldn’t tell you what the sites were. If they showed up in a google search today I’d click on them.
Not to jump on anyone here, but in future, don’t ever do this. If your fire alarm goes off, you don’t solve the problem by taking out the battery. If your browser says there’s malware on a site, that’s not the time to lower your security standards.
Yes, it’s inconvenient but we’re supposed to be the smart ones here.
On a more practical level, the onus here is on the Straight Dope to get a better ad service. They’ve demonstrated that they don’t mind inconveniencing us. Shit is apparently never going to get fixed until it starts inconveniencing them.
If you just pulled the charcoal remnants of a bagel out of your toaster, I’d argue that pulling the battery (and opening a window) would be appropriate.
Are the ads that guests see on the board the same as the ads we all see on the site’s main page (where we read Cecil’s columns), or are those from a different source?
What a crap analogy. You didn’t start the malware problem. You didn’t identify the source. You didn’t fix it. You’re not in any position to decide if the threat is over. Therefore turning down your security measures was a bad idea.
I hope it wasn’t a google ad that caused them to mark this site like it has herpes. Then I’d have to wonder if it has become too complicated for them to know what they are doing or if it has become sentient and started toying with us.
First, I don’t come here as often as in the old days, especially the last couple of years. I’ve started coming back on a much more regular basis since late last year but I’ve been a member since 2001. For me, any malware scare, false alarm or not, has been at the worst a very rare annoyance for me. But perhaps I’ve just been lucky and happened to have been on SDMB vacation when these problems occur. YMMV.
Also, this is just a question / idea / speculation but could the problem be with the ad service trying to bypass ad blockers. I currently have a blocker on Chrome but not IE. Since I usually use Chrome when accessing the SDMB I’m almost positive that soon before the recent “troubles” I started seeing ads near the top of message threads.
Has anyone else noticed ads getting through? Or is it just an occasional browser or ad blocker glitch or maybe even specific to my PC? If some ad suppliers are indeed trying to defeat ad blocking could that be related to malware getting through?
I have been to a site that recognized that I was using a blocker and asked nicely if I would put the the site on my exception list. If the ads aren’t of the kind that are annoying to me I don’t have a problem doing this. Is this something the SDMB could consider doing (asking folks to allow ads through for this site)?
Finally, has anyone gotten infected from this or any other malware alarm here? I’m particularly interested in yesterday’s problem. My Malwarebytes scan found several threats but I hadn’t run it in about two and a half weeks. I seemed to notice some “weirdness” until I quarantined the threats and rebooted a couple of times. I also got rid of of the CNET Download App since it always has two or more instances of CBSI software running using cpu when it should be idle. Not the first time I’ve uninstalled it but it’ll be the last since it is only marginally useful anyway.
This was very odd and may be unrelated but for what it’s worth (happened yesterday)… At one point I clicked on the CNET Download App icon in the systray and selected “show results” or “display app” and the app showed no software needed to be updated. However the display of the results screen was dimmed and had a persistant message box saying something like “Download of firefox package failed” with an “OK” button and an “X” button. It looked very suspicious, especially since the download app didn’t include Firefox in its scan for updates. I could minimize the app to the systray and then restore it and the message would still be there. I was composing a message for this thread and before posting it I clicked on the “OK” button on the download app message and my browser went away. It’s entirely possible I just fat fingered something to close my browser, but that message box was still very weird; it didn’t reappear.
I believe the original sticky message about malware at the top of this forum says that the main page and the message boards are hosted on different servers and use different ad programs.
They never actually said how it happened, but the actions of demoting all administrators to moderator made led me and others to conclude that one of the administrator accounts was hacked. I haven’t found the thread where we came to that conclusion.
