What's this?

[Doomulation]

Sometimes when browsing around the board I've noticed the following little dialog shown in the attached pic. Afaik, this is spyware crap. Where did this come from, Martin? =/

[vleespet]

Yeah, I noticed the same window (in English for me), but I tought it should be my own pc, but now I see it isn't. Should be some kind of spyware on the server :/

[2fast4u]

gain is definitly spyware.

and internet explorer eats kids :P

[Martin]

WTF? It's not from here that's for sure. We only have low paying Google ads and even worse paying default banners. :P

[Trotterwatch]

Doomulation, you sure you ain't been installing Bonzi Buddy again? :P

[euphoria]

First sorry to bring up an old thread but the spyware(?) installers haven't disappeared.

The one that Doomulation showed is still there and one labeled "n-Case Installer" (or something like that), sorry for not having a screenshot, they never come up when you have your finger on PrintScreen :(

So, are they here to stay or is an advertiser fokkin with us?
I really hope these are not here intentionally...

PS. I really have to install Opera here at school.

EDIT: nailed one, Roings, dunno if this is spyware but for sure i ain't installing it.
EDIT2: another one, the nCase/180Solutions

[revl8er]

I haven't seen anything like that on this board in a while.

[Gorxon]

euphoria:

Download and run ad-aware and Spybot and see if you got something nasty installed. The ads here shouldn't bring up such crap :\

[rcgamer]

i have seen it before as well. with internet explorer, not with firefox. I think someone is hijacking some of your space.

[Doomulation]

Doomulation, you sure you ain't been installing Bonzi Buddy again? :P
No way, that bird's friggin' annoying :P
Besides, I got these at school, where as you can guess, I cannot install such crap ;)

[Lex]

I'm getting them too, and i run Adaware quite often

[deesse]

well, since i changed to FireFox i didn't have that crap...huh i used IE before all always get those windows

[euphoria]

euphoria:

Download and run ad-aware and Spybot and see if you got something nasty installed. The ads here shouldn't bring up such crap :\

These appear only on my school's computers where i don't have priviledges to install anything. On my home computer i regularly run Ad-Aware, but since i use Opera these pop-ups never appear, because i've blocked all non-reguested pop-ups (killer feature in opera, IMO).

I realize that the banners have to be there to pay the bandwidth, but pop-ups trying to install something are just bad, mmmkay...
Hope you get rid of these.

[Gorxon]

These appear only on my school's computers where i don't have priviledges to install anything. On my home computer i regularly run Ad-Aware, but since i use Opera these pop-ups never appear, because i've blocked all non-reguested pop-ups (killer feature in opera, IMO).

I realize that the banners have to be there to pay the bandwidth, but pop-ups trying to install something are just bad, mmmkay...
Hope you get rid of these.

School computers, eh? I am willing to bet they are FULL of spyware and crap so it makes it even more unlikely that is comes from here. I don't rule that out though as I dont really have any idea (I don't use IE for obvious reasons). Didn't appear the times I tested with IE though...

[euphoria]

School computers, eh? I am willing to bet they are FULL of spyware and crap so it makes it even more unlikely that is comes from here. I don't rule that out though as I dont really have any idea (I don't use IE for obvious reasons). Didn't appear the times I tested with IE though...

Ah, so you mean that existing spyware on the computer can react to certain pages being displayed on IE?
The reason why i thought these came from your banners was that i only got those pop-ups while surfing here at emutalk. I surfed quite a bit around the net and the only installer pop-ups that i got was here. This is a bit confusing.

[Trotterwatch]

Ok, I think I've sussed out the issue.

I would assume that most people here are savvy enough to use something such as Spybot to add certain referrers to the hosts file.

Seems like if you deactivate host file blocking the pop up will appear (and there is 0 spyware on this machine ;)).

Check the attached file, double click it to rename the hosts file, then surf the site for a while. Double click again to rename it back.

Note I used IE to test. It doesn't seem to be able to load up using Firefox.

[Gorxon]

I tested it too, and indeed there's spyware popping up, so you were right euphoria. Seems like Martin has stumbled on some bad advertising agency again...
I'll send him a mail now about the issue.

[Martin]

We're not running any ads that have spyware in them, I check almost daily to make sure there are no GAIN or activex ads running. However, it's possible that advertisers sneak in bad code in the ads, I will contact the firm and see what they have to say about it. Thanks for the heads up.

[Cyberman]

Is it possible they can get your IP address per chance and use some push code? If it is only happening with IE that means they might be exploiting (heh) a security flaw in IE to do it. Personally (I know this is drastic) you should warn people when they login if they are using IE that it is potentially dangerous to there computer they do so ;)

Cyb

[Doomulation]

Not so dangerous if not having admin privelgies (2K/NT/XP). Or, alternative, you can add it to non-secure places in IE settings. With a little tweaking to attain maximum security.

[Martin]

I contacted our ad firm and here's their reply:


Exactly as you had predicted it was a third party that we use, we have been on the phone with them for the better part of the day to straighten out the situation. We have pulled the 3rd party so you should no longer see those ads running

Hopefully resolved (for this time). :)

[Gorxon]

Nice. Although everyone should really switch to Opera or Firefox already, as IE is good for nothing...well, except causing you problems.

[deesse]

IE is only good for Yahoo Launch Music :)

with FireFox i can't get that

[Cyberman]

That's because they are using a feature that is non WC3 compliant do to security reasons. Have you noticed MS is into making cool things dangerous? ;)

Cyb

[Doomulation]

Indeed, ms makes a lot of things dangerous. However, IE is as the moment, the best within the scripting department. It supports many advanced features of javascript and DHTML. Thus is the usual reason to why I choose IE. But again, I mostly access internet through school computer, which install no other browsers than the default.