Advert Attention: Popups

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]I just thought I'd...tell you, that some of your ads on mO are starting to turn into popups, particularly from a screensaver advertisement. I found some Trojans [the, uuh, viruses >_>] on my computer last night, and I don't know if thats why it was there, but the ad does mention something about 'installation'.

So, I wasn't aware whether or not Administration knew of this problem. Well, now you do, I guess, lol.[/size]

[AzureWolf]

[FONT=book antiqua][SIZE=2][COLOR=blue]Are they popups, or floating ads (i.e., ones that don't open a new window, but hover over stuff you want to see/click on)? I know the latter has been on theOtaku for quite some time.

Every website needs a source of revenue. I know that types of banners are tolerable and others are unacceptable, but personally, just get a good ad blocker. They work wonders, and I haven't had the one I'm using mix up a banner, picture, or movie with an ad yet! Yeah, I hate floating and new-window ads, and I hope OB doesn't resort to them, but really, it doesn't make a big deal if you have one of those programs.

Yeah, I know that this solution circumvents the whole reason for ads, but I personally say donations are the way to go![/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

[DDG]

[size=1]Ah, I think know what Baron's talking about. The one's that pop-up a window that says, "You must download this now to run blah blah blah" or something similar, right? I know some of the stuff that's being asked for you to download is essential to actually running someone's site(like Windows Media Player or something) but some of it that I've gotten has nothing to do at all with the site.

One pop-up download window in particular I'd like to speak about was one that caused my computer to get a virus instantaneously after I clicked the "no" button on the window. That virus completely destroyed my mouse(it would no longer work, no matter what I did) and made me have to do a complete recover for my hard drive.

I hate to put the blame on theOtaku for that incident, but theOtaku.com, myOtaku.com and Otakuboards were the only three sites I was surfing at that exact instant. I only wish I could remember the name of the company on the pop-up, but everything had happened so fast that I didn't quite catch it.

Maybe in the future there could be some kind of intense background check on the companies that wish to advertise on theOtaku/myOtaku before they're allowed to?

Although, the virus that infected my computer could have been there for days or months even I suppose, seeing as I hadn't had the money to renew my subscription to Norton Antivirus(which I still haven't done and will not because I now use McAfee). But other than that I was running a spyware/adware detector and remover and I also had three different pop-up blockers.

Ads do majorly suck.[/size]

[Adam]

I've absolutely never supported pop-up ads, so it's our ad broker that's at fault if you ever see them. Please notify me immediately when this happens and mention the page you were on.

[James]

[color=#707875]Basically, we put restrictions on certain types of ads. However, there have been occasions where our ad client has included things that we don't want (ie: pop-ups and the like). I've notified Adam and I assume that the matter will be dealt with. Adam can probably provide you with more details on this issue than I can, in any case.

Although Adam does tell me that some myOtaku sites are embedding things that prompt such ads/downloads (about 40 people were using a type of music player that we had to ban, because it was creating unauthorized pop-ups). Again, though, Adam can provide more information than I can on this subject. I can only tell you that we are very sensitive to this type of thing; it is our policy to avoid the use of obnoxious pop-up or "crawling" Flash-style ads. You should really only seen banner ads on our sites.

So if other things are popping up, that's something I assume we will be able to deal with once we identify the source for these problems.

[b]Edit:[/b] Oops, Adam posted just before me. Well, there you go, folks. ~_^[/color]

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]It has happened on several members pages, and I think it might have happened one time when I went back into my backroom. It doesn't spawn at all the myOtaku pages I visit, just some of them. And it's not like these people are unknowns either. I got one on Mimmi's, I got one on Panda's, I think I got one on James'. It seems to be fairly random, but common. And it looks like this: [Note: this all happened when I went into my backroom, [i]once[/i].][/size]

[DDG]

[size=1]By the way it looks from your screenshots I'd say its just some spyware/adware that's infected your computer. Most likely from Fun Web Products.

A pop-up blocker would solve the problem and I'd suggest you get a spyware/adware remover as well.[/size]

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]Look, I'm not [i]stupid[/i]. How come these ads only occur when I'm on mO?

And besides, I use Ad-Aware and AVG7.0 every day.[/size]

[MissWem]

[COLOR=DarkRed]hmm.. same thing happens to me just [I]only[/I] when I'm on myO. And then replace the Fun part with Crazywinnings : /[/COLOR]

[Solo Tremaine]

[color=#503f86]I found Adware on my computer too, but even after I removed it I still found pop-ups on MyO with the same sorts of things going on that Baron mentioned- I think I actually caught it from MyO in the first place. I've seen them on every page I've visited today, and the only real way I can avoid them when they do appear is by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del and closing down IE, which is incredibly annoying if I'm doing something in another window which gets closed down too.

Having installed SpyBot, things seem to quieten down okay. But I think it's unlikely that a group of separate users all got Adware at the same time, browsing the same sites simply by chance.[/color]

[Gavin]

[SIZE=1]Interesting, most interesting.

I have not admit that I haven't experienced anything like that on my browser so far, I do get the odd ad saying "Congratulations" but it's never caused any problems and I've never been asked to download anything. I'm running off Webroot Spy Sweeper and PC-cillin 2002 which I installed after a virus totalled my PC, seems to have done the same again a while back though it could be the same virus. I'm actually having this weird experience on OB where Kyuai has posted won't load properly, it has something to do with his banner though for anyone else it seems to load fine. It just seems weird and if anyone has an answer I'd be appreciative.[/SIZE]