new ad problem - xfinity

[slamtheking]

in the past several minutes (and about 7 attempts to navigate the site), any time I click on a forum topic, I'm getting automatically routed to a page with an xfinity survey that my virus software is trigging as a virus attack site.

is this happening to anyone else and is there something we can do here (Byennie?) to check into if this site has been infected?

[Monkhouse]

in the past several minutes (and about 7 attempts to navigate the site), any time I click on a forum topic, I'm getting automatically routed to a page with an xfinity survey that my virus software is trigging as a virus attack site.

is this happening to anyone else and is there something we can do here (Byennie?) to check into if this site has been infected?

Happened to me approximately 12 times in a span of 6 minutes last night on my new computer, I would recommend either downloading Adblock or some form of it. It seems to remove the problem. I believe whenever you refresh or go to a different thread that ends up happening.

[byennie]

Generally speaking the best I can do is report to our ad partner. Of course if it’s widespread enough I can turn off ads until it’s resolved, but not always easy to jump in and make that change timely.

I’m 95% sure these usually come from backfilling programmatic ads, which virtually all networks do these days, but FWIW we’ve been able to increase the number of direct placements which are very unlikely to contain anything malicious.

TL;DR; will report this and I appreciate you making me aware. If it’s resolved for you, likely it was caught and removed already.

[Monkhouse]

Generally speaking the best I can do is report to our ad partner. Of course if it’s widespread enough I can turn off ads until it’s resolved, but not always easy to jump in and make that change timely.

I’m 95% sure these usually come from backfilling programmatic ads, which virtually all networks do these days, but FWIW we’ve been able to increase the number of direct placements which are very unlikely to contain anything malicious.

TL;DR; will report this and I appreciate you making me aware. If it’s resolved for you, likely it was caught and removed already.

We appreciate the hard work byennie, thank you.

That being said, I would suspect the ads that trigger the anti-virus software aren't as malicious as we think. (I could be wrong.) And to keep in mind that the ads help generate the revenue needed to keep this place running.

[jambr380]

Generally speaking the best I can do is report to our ad partner. Of course if it’s widespread enough I can turn off ads until it’s resolved, but not always easy to jump in and make that change timely.

I’m 95% sure these usually come from backfilling programmatic ads, which virtually all networks do these days, but FWIW we’ve been able to increase the number of direct placements which are very unlikely to contain anything malicious.

TL;DR; will report this and I appreciate you making me aware. If it’s resolved for you, likely it was caught and removed already.

Thank you for doing this, byennie. I am experiencing the same issues.

Also - while we are talking about ads - is there anything that can be done about the overly religious/Catholic ones? I know we discussed this a while back, but the same ads are still appearing - and remain the only ads on the site. I know it doesn't really matter to most people, but it might be a bit distracting to those who are totally turned off by religion or are of a different religion.

Thanks again and hope you are staying safe!

[slamtheking]

didn't want to start another topic on the ads so just adding to this one that I created not too long ago but is anyone else seeing a number of religious ads planted right in the middle of the threads?  it was bad enough seeing them on the side of the page with some overlap of the discussion (depending on screen size) but now they're right in the middle of the threads.

anything we can do about this?  I understand we need the ad money but this seems over the top

[SparzWizard]

Adblock Plus on chrome has worked wonders for me here.

[slamtheking]

Adblock Plus on chrome has worked wonders for me here.

seems to block the ads but not the space they take up on the page.