Well, the Internet was nice while it lasted.

The BBQ Pit
1

Story here.

Or to be specific, the link points to a screenshot I uploaded on my Photobucket site. Today, beginning at about 5pm Pacific time, I’m seeing a huge banner ad at the top of my browser screen. It isn’t a toolbar that I can turn off or hide, but it’s in the page of content. It takes up about one sixth of the total real estate of my screen, which sucks especially because it was already hard to read a page of text. I had already moved my task bar over to the right edge to obtain more vertical window size.

Many of the ads are animated and I have a very poor DSL connection. At the moment, I’m looking at ads for Google Maps, Hotwire, Cheap Tickets, and Skype. To the right of those, it’s “V” Valet Custom Cabinets & Closets. Mention this ad and receive $500 off.

Now I must admit, there is a close button at the upper right of this garbage, which I can click to get rid of it.

2

…But when I load another page, like when I posted the OP, it comes right back again.

Every page-load now requires us to do this apparently. Is it just me, or is this just as bad as sandboxed AOL was.

Is this but a dream? Somebody pinch me.

3

Silly Spectre, the internet won’t go away - it will just get buried in a deluge of singing, dancing, popping-up ads that you spend more time clicking to make them go away than you do reading actual pages.

4

Is there a story, or is it just you right now?

5

It’ll be a party like it’s 1999 all over again (on teh intarwebz).

6

Malware?

7

There is no story here. Either buddy’s machine got spyware’d or his dick ISP is injecting ads.

8

When I – ahem – googled about this, I came up with a few stories or mentions, here and there, about how this was coming down the pike.

The ads all seem to be legitimate businesses.

9

Yeah, that’s not really possible.

10

There’s no way this would even be practical. People would in short order create something that blocked the ads, if current adblockers didn’t work already.

11

I really think you have malware.

12

I heard the ads go away if you mail this “story” to at least 10 people in your address book.

13

If that doesn’t work, you can try SuperAntiMalwareBlockyThing 2000 free for six hours. It makes your system go faster!

14

With firefox and adblocking I do not get those ads. I just opened up chrome and it doesn’t have ads either.I am not going to touch internet exploder with a 10 foot pole, or a 5’7" finn either.

15

Are you talking about the banner add at the top of the Photobucket site only? Or is this happening everywhere?

16

I’d be happy not to see “Encinitas Mom Makes $77/Hr Online” at the top of my SDMB screen. Then it states;
“Unemployed Mom Makes $6,397/Month Working Online.”
How the hell can she make 6000+ a month working yet be unemployed?

Although she’s pretty cute, I’m not clicking on it to find out what she does.

17

She poses for stock photos to use in banner ads. Duh.

18

I highly doubt Spectre hangs out at the sort of sites where a person could get malware…

:wink:

19

Sooo … who are we pitting here, exactly? Relatives, virus makers, the IE devs, ad designers, all of the above?

20

The best part of this thread is when you read buddy’s other thread about being in IT.