Well your suggestion so far has been for the SDMB to commit financial suicide over a few users who may have picked up a virus from something related to an ad displayed by the SDMB.
Perhaps you have a vendor for bulletproof non-exploitable ads of a similar revenue grade? I’m sure Ed, Xash, ect will be all over it, along with the rest of the internet.
We await your insight.
I don’t normally wander into ATMB, but I saw the thread title on the main page. I have been getting strange attacks from malware/viruses for the past two weeks or so. They are always blocked by my Norton AV, but they are the first attacks I’ve had in a long, long time.
I’m running Windows XP and Firefox 3.6.
The first was a HTTP Phoenix Toolkit Java exploit. The others were from a server named “RICO”.
It really freaks me out, so it would be great if this could be taken care of.
I don’t understand how you can be denying that the malware issues being reported in this thread aren’t coming from this site. Multiple people are having the same problem at the same time and the one thing in common is that it’s all users from this site.
If you want even more proof do a search for “malware” in ATMB and you’ll find the same thing happening in previous threads on the subject. Multiple users having the same problem at the same time.
I only say “may” because there are several exploits available that can hit a PC in a variety of ways. If your recieve an email worm in outlook while you are at the SDMB, did it come the the SDMB, or was it the mail? Was there more than one browser window/tab active? Do you download music from the likes of Limewire/Kazaa/Bearshare/Whatever? Some viruses do not deploy until after a reboot, if you opened
I am not trying to be an asshole around here. I have on several occasions offered to help dopers with PC issues, including virus problems for no charge via remote where time and schedules permit and several have taken me up on it. I do know how this stuff gets spread, I do understand the challenges involved in fighting it, and I think getting all huffy at the staff here is difficult to justify when the board is in some ways just as much a victim as the user.
How can you be so completely oblivious to how this sounds? Are you being paid for these posts?
Seriously. People are frustrated. This site is serving up ads that are infecting people’s computers with malware. And you can’t even acknowledge that much. This is so far beyond blaming the victim I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it.
There is no “may” about it. People *are *getting malware from ads on the SDMB. It is a known issue among the staff. They are working to address it. (I also love your contradictory excuses: “Malware-laden ads are everywhere on the internet and impossible to avoid serving! … But they’re not here!”)
That’s not my job. You may note that the title under my name is “Member,” not “Moderator” or “Administrator” or “Gormless Weenie.” I don’t have to be able to execute a triple Lutz myself to tell you that the woman in the sequined spandex who just planted her ass on the ice is doing it wrong.
The ads on this page are “You are the 10,000,000th VISITOR, you’ve won a prize worth $59!!!” and “Shave the Bieber”
So what tier of ads are these again?
Google Ads and Rubicon’s “Obama Thinks Moms in Idaho Should Back to School!” ad network are the lowest tier of ads there is. The Powers That Be would make a shit-ton more money if they just opened a thread allowing members to buy ad space for their latest projects for a few pennies.
Hell, I got a website that gets 150,000-200,000 visitors a month. Forget the SDMB, buy ads from me!
no, I am trying to say this problem is bigger than the SDMB, and singling them out for the blame is inappropriate.
I am saying nothing of the sort, I am saying that singling out the dope for blame would be like yelling at one cop for not singlehandedly stopping a riot, sure, he is part of the solution, but only one tiny part that is powerless to stop it all alone.
The staff here, as skilled as they might be, will not end up stopping ad based exploits from affecting the user base.
I do know things about how viruses work, how they are spread, and how internet advertising works, and I don’t see a workable cure that does not involve killing the patient. Which is so far your only suggestion. If I had a solution to the problem I would be suggesting it.
You say, use “non exploitable ads” so linking would be out of the question because a link could go to an infection spreading site, java, perl, and flash based ads right out the window, whats left, pretty pictures with no coding or linking.
Yep, he’s getting paid. No one would shill like this for free.
Linking to a site that contains malware wouldn’t be an issue here since the staff has no control what goes on at another site, or what links people click. Going to strictly text/picture based ads would solve the malware issue it seems.
And who offers this service?
The SDMB would have to… gasp… handle their own ads to do that. A lot of big sites do that you know.
That’s ridiculous. If my pizza delivery driver takes a dump all over my pie, I’m damn sure going to hold the pizza place responsible even if the problem of food service employee shenanigans is “bigger than” that particular restaurant. And yes, even if they gasp lose some revenue by being a driver short until they replace the bad one, they should.
It’s the SDMB’s responsibility to not infect peoples’ computers when people visit the SDMB. What part of that are you having trouble with?
I’m genuinely curious about this, and I’m not trying to be argumentative. Which big sites handle their own ads?
Problem is, this isn’t a simple matter of a part failure or not wanting to apply the effort. People much better at this, with far more resources are unable to stop it every day. Even a simple weblink can link to something that can load a virus and the SDMB would have no control over what happens on the other end of that link.
Caught something today at work while browsing without logging in. No idea which thread or ad since I ended up crashing firefox. I’m pretty sure everything was up to date. However, the only protective software I was running was an antivirus program. This was an administrator account.
I think I got rid of it. Hardest part for me was remembering how to boot in safe mode.
I am a member of a sort of car nut forum devoted to the LS1 GM engine, that is also run with vBulleten. It has 168,000 members. It also has flash adds, banner adds, links to dozens of vendors both as separate links and embedded in the forum sections, member signature pictures and other commercially viable links. All kinds of potentially unsafe things. Lookie here:
What it doesn’t have and has never once in the 10 years I have been a member offered, is malware. They successfully intercept threats before they are offered to the customer. Or they have insisted that the vendors follow safe ad practices, I don’t know.
As I have said before, my Norton always catches the threats offered by the SDMB and I have never had to clean things up after a visit. But it is very disconcerting to visit a site that is supposedly devoted to fighting ignorance and receive warnings on a regular basis, as if I were viewing an asian porn site.
If stopping these problems is beyond either the budget or staff capabilities of the SDMB that is one thing, but quit blaming your customers. It is obviously way past time for someone at the SDMB to fight their own ignorance and find out how other sites offer ads without these problems.
Being newly among the ranks of the re-employed, I will purchase a membership and support your business if you can keep Norton from warning me of malware while visiting here for the rest of the year. A pretty safe bet given current attitudes here is that you will not be successful.
I really like this place but the lack of tech skills or desire to improve the product offered disappoints me. I hope that will change.
Look, my job is Internet based. I’m online, usually, at least 8 hours per day and more at home. I know that clicking a link can do bad stuff. So do most people here, I’d wager.
What people don’t understand is that by simply loading the page at the SDMB, they can be infected with malware. And you’re ok with that, because “it happens to a lot of people.”
Again, it’s the SDMB’s responsibility to not infect peoples’ computers when people visit the SDMB. Notice I didn’t mention in there about linking to somewhere else. When people are here, they should have a reasonable expectation of their computer not being infected. True or false?
Again, your analogies are leading me to believe that you have absolutely no grasp of what people are actually mad about here. This isn’t getting mad at a cop for not stopping a riot. This is getting mad because a cop has caught the same guy speeding drunk past your house five times and let him off with nothing worse than a warning not to do it again every time.
Explain to me how a simple link will infect my computer. It could lead to an infected site, but that’s not the complaint here. The complaint is that someone merely visits an SDMB page, and the ads on that page infect the person (possibly on mouseover or whatever). If you were to have to actually *visit *the site to become infected, that would be a much smaller concern. Again, our issue is with the fact that the SDMB staff appear to be considering a certain number of infections gained simply by visiting this site to be acceptable losses to maintain the site’s level of income.
And again, you’re claiming that having to eliminate infectable ads will kill the SDMB. Where’s your proof? Why do *you *think people will continue to view the ads here if there’s a good chance that they’ll be infected with malware?
Off the top of my head, I’m pretty sure Penny Arcade handles their own ads.