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Advertising links in the status messages?


Keel M.

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I just clicked to view someone's new status message and one word in his update and one word in the only response were both linked to some commercial advertisement. Is this a new thing to generate money for the site or am I just snorting too much coke again still asleep?

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We haven't implemented any new advertisements and there shouldn't be anything like that in the status updates.

Which status was it, was it only that one or is it on others as well ?

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Sounds like spam to me.

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I think it's some kind of cookie or download that happens. My desktop at home gets those link things all the time.

I'm getting it all the time on the "tablet" version of the site.

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Who are the people posting these Status messages? If they've signed up just this minute and the first thing they post is an ad for something, I think Spam would be a reasonable assumption.

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I've never noticed anything like that. If you do come across this how do you report it. PM a mod.

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I've never noticed anything like that. If you do come across this how do you report it. PM a mod.

Click on that persons name (above their status update), that will take you to their profile page. In the bottom right hand corner of that page (just above the "rules" and "Cookie Information") is a link marked "Report This Member." Click on that and tell us what the problem is and we will do our best to resolve the problem.

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I only saw it in that one member's status message and in that one response. Both individuals involved are members in good standing. It wasn't a copy and pasted link but one word in each of their responses which had been turned into a clickable/mouseover link.

Saru, I don't know if you can report the banners which appear on this site, but twice today my mouse as slid over one of the banners (it's not showing for me right now or I would get a screen shot) and a new website popped up on a new tab. The site is for what appears to be an online game called Wings of Destiny. I can give you the URL in PM if you'd like.

Note: I'm really thinking it's the banner advertisements. There is one right now that is some kind of game and it's making my arrow blink and go crazy. I also noticed that the words 'technical support' in the description of this topic were made into a link when I first signed in a moment ago, but now they look normal. I'll get as many screen shots as I can, Saru.

Edited by Lady Kasey
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I've had a look at the screen-shots you sent me, these adverts are nothing to do with UM and aren't being generated by the site.

At this point it looks most likely that you have a virus/malware on your computer, I've sent you a link to a free anti-virus application that should be able to pick up and remove any nasties you might have installed on your machine.

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I downloaded and ran the Ad-aware and it caught two things. I restarted and checked. The links are still there. I also removed one program that I had on here that I thought might be causing problems. Restarted again. And the links are still there. So I dunno what to do now.

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Have you tried accessing the forums using a different browser or a different computer/device to see if the links are still there ?

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I tried my iPad in the wee hours of the morning. All looks fine there. I should also point out that whenever I access this forum here on my laptop, I have to sign in each time. I don't remain signed in as I do at work. Before signing in this morning I noticed that the links are not there.

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Is it your home laptop or your work computer that the links show up on ?

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My laptop here at home. I guess I'll just visit the site only at work from now on.

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Try Internet Explorer, Safari or Chrome on your home laptop, the malware might only be affecting Firefox.

Furthering that thought, make sure you don't have a rogue Firefox plug-in installed.

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Okay one question. This laptop has Windows 7 on it. I'm still learning all the ins and outs of W7. We still have XP at work. (No comments please.) I remember with an older version you had to turn off the restore thing before something could really be cleaned or removed from your computer, otherwise at a restart, Windope would put it all back, malware included. Do I have to turn off restore like that in W7?

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it really does sound like malware or virus

try doing a hijack. if you don't know how to do a hijack or read the results of one there are sites online that will do that for you.

i've had stuff going on in the past similiar to your issue and doing a hijack found things that antivirus programs missed.

Edited by JGirl
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Okay one question. This laptop has Windows 7 on it. I'm still learning all the ins and outs of W7. We still have XP at work. (No comments please.) I remember with an older version you had to turn off the restore thing before something could really be cleaned or removed from your computer, otherwise at a restart, Windope would put it all back, malware included. Do I have to turn off restore like that in W7?

I use Windows 7 and as far as I know you don't need to disable anything in order to delete or uninstall anything from your system, not unless you have specifically set up the Windows Restore feature to reset to a previous checkpoint on every reboot.

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it really does sound like malware or virus

try doing a hijack. if you don't know how to do a hijack or read the results of one there are sites online that will do that for you.

i've had stuff going on in the past similiar to your issue and doing a hijack found things that antivirus programs missed.

Totally lost me there, JGirl. Searching Google only gives me results that I'm quite sure have nothing at all to do with computers.

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Totally lost me there, JGirl. Searching Google only gives me results that I'm quite sure have nothing at all to do with computers.

i will pm you so i don't derail the thread ok?

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Okay I decided to do the one thing I hadn't done yet before diving into JGirl's suggestion. I'm logged in on my laptop and browsing with Internet Explorer and see none of the random advert links I saw in Firefox. So I guess I'm dumping FF and getting Chrome in its place.

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Well THAT was a colossal failure. :( I am now on Google Chrome and see the advertisement links again. And it is only on this site that I see stuff like this. It is annoying to say the least.

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But not Internet Explorer - it's quite possible that whatever is causing this on your computer is affecting only certain browsers.

I think your best bet is to do a really full and thorough security scan using more than one application.

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