Members urged to be cautious of scammers sending pop-ups

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I have had Ad Block Plus for years and it is still running on my browser. It wasn't able to detect the issue on WP though, nor did other quite good security programmes on my own computer. Wrong Planet is the only website that I have encountered these issues with.

Malware is far more sophisticated now. The attacks in 2018 are apparently very cunning on a level not seen before.
Perhaps (?) for the meantime we should ask members not to post links to YouTube, memes, any websites not certificated as safe etc? Or at least ask members not to open them.

I wish I'd read that 5 minutes ago, before I posted a YouTube link on another thread. I presume the risk isn't in the posting itself (if it works as intended), but that the act of clicking any external link on WP may be risky these days? Personally I don't normally visit YT as such, I paste the link into a small utility that writes an HTML page with the link embedded in it, and play it from there. Otherwise YT stops the playback and demands that I agree to their privacy policy, which I'm refusing to do.

AdBloc Plus is good, but it doesn't catch everything. But I've found that the few unwanted tabs and popups it lets through are normally completely blank, probably because NoScript won't allow them to run without my consent.

We have ALL of these installed :
Adblock, Adblockplus, Adblocker for Youtube, AdblockX, Adbusters, Adguard Adblocker, Ublock Origin.

Seems to do the trick.

Running Firefox, Windows 10 with Norton.

Thanks, B19.

You are welcome.

I hope that WrongPlanet.net regains safe status in the near future, and Alex, if you are reading this, please update us about the issues members including myself have been reporting.

Also this week, my computer protection detected a serious malware Trojan attack. This was quarantined and dealt with, and I don't know whether it was related to the incident I experienced on WP or not. All they could say is that I must have visited an unsafe site unknowingly. It could have been any site on the net I guess, but it's the not knowing what is happening here at WP that is very unsettling for me and possibly other members also.

I won't be around much until the issues have been sorted and members advised.

Hmmm.......AdBlock Plus tells me it's blocking a lot of ads on WP pages:
"Cognitive empathy. Opinion" has 7,
"Aversion to Gossip" has 13, and
"Are you scared of smoke detectors?" has 19

I've not noticed numbers as high as that anywhere else, not even on YouTube and Facebook. It's surely insane to put 19 unsolicited ads on one page, isn't it? Anybody getting hit by that lot would probably never come back.

This is an issue on a lot of websites. Haven't had any such problems yet browsing from school without an adblocker.

I'll keep my eyes peeled.

The maximum I am getting is showing 7.

Saying that (just now whilst trying to login) for the first EVER time Norton has put a pop-up in the corner saying it has stopped a re-direct to a unsolicited site.

That is going to be watched now, and if it happens again I am out of here.

ETA: [bit of trial and error, and I have found it happens when you click on the login button (but only after clicking "somewhere" else specific first)....... ] It is re-directing to what appears to be a dating site. Firefox/Norton seem to be doing their job correctly and blocking the site and access to it.

^Strangely, AdBlock Plus is saying it hasn't had to block anything today. I've seen redirects elsewhere on the Web, but NoScript usually renders them as blank pages.

Any feedback from the administrator virus scans you do on your PC, or from Windows Defender? (You have to go to the Windows Defender screen to view threats they have identified, quarantined or removed to see the list there; they don't automatically notify you). Google "access to Windows Defender reports" if you can't find it yourself.

Alex or whoever is admining this site could look into the software Mac Rumors Forums is using. They did a change to a new platform about 2 or 3 years ago and have a very reliable forum.

Thanks, perhaps Alex will see that and check it out. He is the only admin here (that I know of).

..

Yesterday I signed up with an email provider (Proton) because of their reputation for privacy and security, and entered the new email address here for WP to send me notifications on my threads, and PMs from members wanting help, and notifications from the thread in the WP forum where members post requests for help.

The new email is fully functional, (it has been tested for receiving other emails) but won't accept emails from Wrong Planet. I noticed it was strange that no notifications from WP came to the Proton inbox but that active threads I'm in and Private Messages had been sent to me.

Unfortunately I have had to change back to a widely used and far less safe provider to get notifications again. (I now get them there as before, they have started turning up).

Something is wrong here. And it's not just the name of the forum.

^ Occasionally I've had that problem with not receiving topic reply notifications. At the time it was suggested that the email account's "smart" spam blocking feature was causing the trouble. Possibly it might work again if WP was added to the safe senders list, if Proton has one of those.

Soliloquist has provided information about the malware here in this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=362205&p=7865205#p7865205

I got another malicious popup box with verbals yesterday on WP. So the danger continues.

It's happening on my phone (Android).

Chrome is the worse for this nonsense. I can't get past the log in page using Chrome.

I do use an ad blocker browser, but now it's crashing through that.

Since more people are now browsing through phones, ALEX GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER.

If people are using ad block browser, your site isn't making money because no one views ads. If you are using a company to feed ads to this site, they need to know this issue. It's on their end. My friend had a similar problem on her site.