Maybe it is just my computer, but suddenly there are random words throughout threads that are hyperlinked, and they are pointing to ads when you hover or click on them.
Is this a new ad policy for the SDMB or has my computer suddenly allowed this to happen?
Your computer has picked up some malware.
Agreed. This happened to some of my web design customers. I’d give them the URL to a proposed design and they’d email back all frantic asking why I put all these crazy hyperlinks in their site. Usually I have to meet them face to face and show them the site on a malware free computer to get them to realize they’ve downloaded something bad.
Do a Spyware or Malwarebytes check on your system and that should tell you where the problem is.
Yeah, it’s malware. It happened to me last week. Run your favorite malware remover and they will go away.
OK, so somehow I screwed everything up.
I downloaded Spyaware (Spybot) and that didn’t help and caused more problems simply because it was saying I am not the “Administrator” on my own computer. Couldn’t get that to work.
Tried Adaware - and that didn’t help and was fighting with Spybot.
So I simply restored my computer to about 40 days ago - when the problem did not exist - but that didn’t work and I still have those annoying hyperlinks.
One more time - which of those above (Spybot or Adaware) is worth re-loading again?
I am looking for a “Free” download (I know, I get what I pay for) - so if you can assist with any suggestions, I would be grateful.
BTW, I do have Avast! and that has been good to date, but perhaps it ain’t so great for this problem.
try *malwarebytes *or iobit malware fighter.
Also, do not ever click on a banner ad anywhere if you can help it. If you’re interested in the product being advertised, do a separate google search for the item or service.
This will help avoid some of the shady businesses that use advertisements intentionally modelled after another company’s ad campaign or logo but in reality only want to phish your information, or sell an inferior product, or just install spyware/malware instead of selling you anything!
Of course this isn’t foolproof, and YMMV, but taking one more arrow out of the enemy’s quiver is a good thing in my book.
I use this one and I love it.
Nope, what I’m seeing are hyperlinks, only here. I’ve run Malwarebytes, and it didn’t pick anything up.
Right on this page, for instance, the word “Administrator” under Marley23’s name is a hyperlink to win an iPad, the words “web design” in Eutychus’s post are a link to earn an art degree and the word “install” in Uber the Goober’s post is a link for H&R Block. The address bar at the bottom of my screen shows a Straight Dope thread address on mouse-over, but the pop-up (when I mouse-over the link) is the ad.
It’s only on this board that I’m seeing it.
You need to run other anti-malware programs. Each one will pick up stuff the others don’t.
I just looked at this thread in another browser(not signed in). No links. You have a bug. It may only show up here as it might be activated by one of the ad feeds(WAG).
While I’m not an IT guy, this sounds bad.
Do you read the boards/surf the net under your administrator account? Hopefully not. If you do, you could have picked up a bug which is keeping you from logging in as administrator. That would be terrible.
What operating system are you using?
DMark,
I am not an IT person, but I had a similar problem about ten days ago.
Firstly, have you tried the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool?
That may help- what I picked up wouldn’t let me run it after downloading.
My bug also disabled system restore so I had to manually reset it.
But I would suggest the tool above to start.
Did you download something from CNet? They used to be good, but are now packaging malware with their installer. I had the exact same thing happen, so I looked up the name of the program (I think Coupon Commando or some such), which I got from the Task Manager. There were a lot of instructions on-line for how to get rid of this one particular program, without relying on malware scans (this was on my work PC, and I can’t have the kind of access to my computer to download scanning programs - just the malware itself :smack:).
Well what do you know…I finally figured out the fix.
I Googled how to get rid of these pop up ads and came up with - an old SDMB thread!
I added “NoSript” as an add-on to my Firefox.
Problem solved…so far.
I noticed this just yesterday too.
I normally read The Dope at home, using Firefox on Linux, with JavaScript disabled. As I’ve mentioned many times here, disabling JavaScript is a massive improvement in many ways. Most pages load ten times faster, what with all the crap that is eliminated. The vast majority of ads disappear. All the cutesy features that are disabled are a trivial price to pay, IMHO. I enter smilies and formatting tags by simply hand-typing them. Works for me. I only enable JS when I need it for MY needs, like when I use an on-line bill-pay site.
Yesterday I looked at The Dope from an office computer. Sure enough, pages took ten times longer to load (and you can tell how much junk it’s loading by watching the site names in the status bar at the bottom of the screen as it loads). There were spurious-looking links that displayed pop-up ads when you mouse-over them. There was one pop-under ad that sprang out at me all by itself, with video and audio.
Just kill JavaScript, and on-line life will get much wonderfuller.
ETA: As others have noted, you can use add-ons like NoScript too, which gives you control of which sites to allow to run JS and which sites to squelch JS. That’s fine, but I find it perfectly satisfying to squelch JS for ALL sites, turning it on only in the cases where I need it. Works for me.
This happened to me a while back. Basically some add-in was installed on my computer. Sorry but I don’t recall the name of it. It wasn’t hard to find on the program list.
Go to Start > Control Panel > Uninstall Programs and look for add-ins. Yank the sombitches and restart your computer.
If you, or someone, finds out what sombitch program(s) in particular need to be yanked, could you post it here please for the rest of us?
Like I wrote above, I saw this on the office mochine, and I don’t want to go yanking suspected sombitches there unless someone tells me specifically what sombitches I should be looking for.
When I temporarily allow “SDMB scripts” to be added, look what is also included:
zugo.com, rubiconproject.com, akamaihd.net, exelator.com, quantserv.com, viglink.com,straightdope.com,googleapis.com
All of those can’t be good, can they?
And all of them popped in to join the fun when I simply allowed Straight Dope scripts to be allowed.
FWIW, I don’t have NoScript and I still have JavaScript allowed. I do run Adblocker, but for this run-through of of the forums I turned it off. I got nothing but the expected between-post ad stuff.
So if NoScript/turning off JavaScript is the difference between seeing “hyperlink ads” and not, there might be something else on your system that’s generating them. Searching a little for “Zugo” indicates that it’s a malware company that appears to be spreading it’s stuff mostly as toolbar add-ons.