adware

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It seems that I may have been picking up adware from this site lately.
I scan and remove it, and it comes back, usually as soon as I log on to WP.

Although that's purely circumstantial, it makes me wonder if someone wouldn't want to check it out....I'm not one to visit a lot of random webistes, usually.

Yet another reason not to allow ads.

I almost freaked out and left wrongplanet soon after joining because something kept setting off my virus protection almost every time I came here. After a little research, I realized I had a vulnerable version of adobe flash player. I downloaded the latest version of flash player and have not had a single problem since.

Get AdBlocker Plus and Avast....together they keep 99% of the crapware from getting into your computer in the first place.

yes, I remember that, claire333! We went round and round trying to work out if we had something 'attached' to WP at that time, but the Firewall was working well.

Merle

I have the same problem and somebody suggested getting a new browser which I'm doing tonight but a local guy who I buy computers froms says that this site is hosted by just another site and that the stuff were picking up is from the main host site and not from the Wrong Planet so what gives here??
If this is so why is Alex just hosting the site from just another mass-market discussion board hosts site the drowns us in advertising.

After some email I understand that I need a 'firewall' or a different browser to get a regular picture of the site so I'll follow the suggestions but it seems really stupid to me as I've never seen this type of stuff before but I can appreciate the concept of it all so I'll shut up about it as I was mistaken in my assumptions I guess.

The site content comes from the WP server, which is entirely controlled by Alex. It certainly is NOT "just another mass-market discussion board hosts site". The advertising pays (to some extent) for that server. I believe Alex negotiates that via agencies that allow him some control over what types of advertising are permitted (which is an imperfect system, at times). The advertising itself comes from the advertisers' sites, in the same way that images in posts are links to other sites.

Erm, as the next post was half an hour later, and it takes about 5 minutes to download and install Firefox, then a couple on minutes to get AdBlock sorted... where did the "Oh! This browser is nice!" message go?




There are various ways of handling unwanted stuff appearing on your screen. Possibly the worst way to handle it is with a firewall. Operating at that level has some advantages, but it's a bit of a sledgehammer, and for reducing advertising, almost unworkable. On XP, the provided firewall is adequate for most users. It does the essential part, which is to block attempts by people to access your machine from outside - i.e. trying to make connections to your machine without your permission/knowledge.

The advantage of Firefox/AdBlock is that it can be very specific, plus it employs a constantly updated online database of advertisers, which targets everything specifically, rather than just as a blanket exclusion of sites.

The other suggestion that was made, getting a "hosts" file, can also help, but that's not so much for legitimate advertising, but for malware. E.g. Spybot (which I just updated on my XP) is providing me with 10,026 entries there. There first is "127.0.0.1 localhost", which is often the ONLY entry people will see in the file (WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts). This tells your machine that all references to "localhost" should translate to the IP address "127.0.0.1", which is ALWAYS your local machine. The other 10,025 lines Spybot has added to the hosts files all read much the same, but with "localhost" replaced with know malware site names. I won't even give any of the names it fields off, just in case it tempts anyone to try them out, but the lines look like "127.0.0.1 www.SiteThatDoesNastyThings.com". Whenever there is a url link (on a browser page, off an email, or whatever), it has to translate it to an IP address. The FIRST place it looks, is in your own, private "hosts" file (as above), hence sees the "127.0.0.1" and tries to use your own machine as the http server - which fails, abysmally... hurrah! Site blocked.

Naturally, the hosts file won't help when the malware already has the IP address, rather than a URL. E.g. it won't block a http://999.999.999.999/nasty.exe link (where I have refused to put remotely possible numbers, as there isn't any way I could be certain a valid set would not actually work!). However, these are the sort of links that don't work for very long, because they are instantly traced and squashed.