Another endorsement for using ad blocker

Well the ads here have resorted to a new low. I log in today and the page gets redirected to some malware page that Norton blocked. I downloaded Ad Block Plus for Firefox and installed it and it's all good. No ads, and no pesky redirecting me somewhere other than CMR. Rock on!

I don't have that issue with my desktop or tablet, but I do on my phone.

I have ad blocker on my phone and pc

alldatndensum wrote:I don't have that issue with my desktop or tablet, but I do on my phone.

If iphone then Focus by Mozilla else I don't know.

Android - Samsung Galaxy 5

alldatndensum wrote:Android - Samsung Galaxy 5

This may be good news for you.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/31/10880394/samsung-internet-android-ad-content-blocker-adblock-fast

I'm at a loss. I'm half tempted to make a video of all the dead end pop ups Forumotion takes me too to show Exo. Literally, I have to close the browser entirely about 5 times just to get to one thread.

It's this white screen that buzzes, says my phone (and references the wrong model number) has 8-13 viruses on it and tries to get me to download this anti-virus app. I've ran malware apps, anti virus apps, even the anti virus it recommends... no infection found, yet these popups resume.

ONLY on the CMR. No other sites do this...
(Samsung Galaxy S4)

Firefox keeps the ads at bay, but embedded videos don't work. Flash fox (Firefox with flash) works, but it's glitchy and clunkier than a beta. Big brother Chrome shows embedded videos, but there's these phone-stopping really invasive ads. Again, only here...

ThomasEversole wrote:I'm at a loss. I'm half tempted to make a video of all the dead end pop ups Forumotion takes me too to show Exo. Literally, I have to close the browser entirely about 5 times just to get to one thread.

It's this white screen that buzzes, says my phone (and references the wrong model number) has 8-13 viruses on it and tries to get me to download this anti-virus app. I've ran malware apps, anti virus apps, even the anti virus it recommends... no infection found, yet these popups resume.

ONLY on the CMR. No other sites do this...
(Samsung Galaxy S4)

Firefox keeps the ads at bay, but embedded videos don't work. Flash fox (Firefox with flash) works, but it's glitchy and clunkier than a beta. Big brother Chrome shows embedded videos, but there's these phone-stopping really invasive ads. Again, only here...

Yeah, I just get flabbergasted when folks bring this stuff up.

I know what people mean with pop-up/clickthru hell, because I see it kinda frequently from article people share on Facebook......and I know that eventually, you notice that it happens every time you click an article from specific providers, so you simply stop clicking on shares from those sites, and I  don't want folks to do that HERE.  Despite my apparently unmatched ability to drive people away, I rarely really WANT people to quit the place.....

I have literally NEVER had an issue here.  Not one time, and I'm not just saying that.  I literally don't know what to tell people that have theses issues or how to help them out!  I don't know if it's a legit Forumotion deal, if people have malware on their devices, if perhaps there's been a little bit of hacker hijacking at whatever portal Forumotion uses where someone has managed to insert some foreign code or something like that, I just don't know!

The only thing I DO know is that if there is somewhere in our (CMR) control settings where Forumotion provides us tools to change what ads are presented, or the manner they are presented in, I am entirely unable to locate them.

It frustrates me to not be able to fix this for people.......but I don't have the ability to do anything about it.

About 3 days ago, I started experiencing the same thing Thomas is talking about on my GS5. I usually keep a tab open for this site, but when the pop-up starts, I have to close it and try to re-open it to get to the site. I ran a virus scan this morning and everything seems ok for the moment.

ThomasEversole wrote:I'm at a loss. I'm half tempted to make a video of all the dead end pop ups Forumotion takes me too to show Exo. Literally, I have to close the browser entirely about 5 times just to get to one thread.

It's this white screen that buzzes, says my phone (and references the wrong model number) has 8-13 viruses on it and tries to get me to download this anti-virus app. I've ran malware apps, anti virus apps, even the anti virus it recommends... no infection found, yet these popups resume.

ONLY on the CMR. No other sites do this...
(Samsung Galaxy S4)

Firefox keeps the ads at bay, but embedded videos don't work. Flash fox (Firefox with flash) works, but it's glitchy and clunkier than a beta. Big brother Chrome shows embedded videos, but there's these phone-stopping really invasive ads. Again, only here...

That is EXACTLY what happens with my Galaxy S5!  I couldn't describe it better!

d@v!d wrote:

alldatndensum wrote:Android - Samsung Galaxy 5

This may be good news for you.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/31/10880394/samsung-internet-android-ad-content-blocker-adblock-fast

I will check that out.

The Adblocker Fast app is working wonderfully!  Thanks, d@vid!

alldatndensum wrote:The Adblocker Fast app is working wonderfully!  Thanks, d@vid!

+1

The pop-ups started again today. This app has helped tremendously.

Hey all, I am very sorry about this.  Us mods got a PM yesterday about some pornographic ads.  I contacted Forumotion about this and will do what I can to make sure this goes away.  In the mean time, I highly recommend everyone to use an ad blocker.  I use Adblock Plus and it works wonderfully.  Here's a link of how to install it:
https://adblockplus.org/getting_started

Thanks for letting us know, Kerrick!

Another thing you guys can do that touches on the ad situation, but is more about general security is use No-Script in Firefox on the PC. It blocks all java script by default. Initially it is a pain as practically no web pages work, but as you build your 'white list' of pages that you want to allow to run script you can get functionality with a lot more safety than with an AV alone. Something to observe is how many players have their hand in a typical web page. You can see that there are a lot of different companies tracking you and serving ads. Every so often I have to turn it off to load a page that I can't get to work with it and remember how rose tinted my web surfing is between No-Script and ad-blocker.

Kerrick wrote:Hey all, I am very sorry about this.  Us mods got a PM yesterday about some pornographic ads.  I contacted Forumotion about this and will do what I can to make sure this goes away.  In the mean time, I highly recommend everyone to use an ad blocker.  I use Adblock Plus and it works wonderfully.  Here's a link of how to install it:
https://adblockplus.org/getting_started

Something that I think that we should consider is our testimony in this light. We know that this forum site is provided to us for 'free' at the cost that the provider gets to run ads. but, I wonder what some people, who don't understand much about how the internet works, might think when they browse our site would think seeing a 'Christian' site that has pr0n ads.

Are there other 'free' hosts that we might move to that don't take their revenue from such unscrupulous ad networks?

d@v!d wrote:

Kerrick wrote:Hey all, I am very sorry about this.  Us mods got a PM yesterday about some pornographic ads.  I contacted Forumotion about this and will do what I can to make sure this goes away.  In the mean time, I highly recommend everyone to use an ad blocker.  I use Adblock Plus and it works wonderfully.  Here's a link of how to install it:
https://adblockplus.org/getting_started

Something that I think that we should consider is our testimony in this light. We know that this forum site is provided to us for 'free' at the cost that the provider gets to run ads. but, I wonder what some people, who don't understand much about how the internet works, might think when they browse our site would think seeing a 'Christian' site that has pr0n ads.

Are there other 'free' hosts that we might move to that don't take their revenue from such unscrupulous ad networks?

From what the Forumotion guys think, it's an "external source" and not originating from Forumotion or their advertisers.  This would make sense, since for example, CHM doesn't have this problem.  Overall I think Forumotion is a great option and it would be a huge feat to move onto another platform.  The folks there seem pretty knowledgeable and helpful.  I think we should be able to resolve this without having to move.

Kerrick wrote:

d@v!d wrote:

Kerrick wrote:Hey all, I am very sorry about this.  Us mods got a PM yesterday about some pornographic ads.  I contacted Forumotion about this and will do what I can to make sure this goes away.  In the mean time, I highly recommend everyone to use an ad blocker.  I use Adblock Plus and it works wonderfully.  Here's a link of how to install it:
https://adblockplus.org/getting_started

Something that I think that we should consider is our testimony in this light. We know that this forum site is provided to us for 'free' at the cost that the provider gets to run ads. but, I wonder what some people, who don't understand much about how the internet works, might think when they browse our site would think seeing a 'Christian' site that has pr0n ads.

Are there other 'free' hosts that we might move to that don't take their revenue from such unscrupulous ad networks?

From what the Forumotion guys think, it's an "external source" and not originating from Forumotion or their advertisers.  This would make sense, since for example, CHM doesn't have this problem.  Overall I think Forumotion is a great option and it would be a huge feat to move onto another platform.  The folks there seem pretty knowledgeable and helpful.  I think we should be able to resolve this without having to move.

I do realize that it wouldn't be an easy thing, but if such ads were the norm wouldn't it be worth it? The thing about what you said is even more scary as that implies that the ad servers the forum motion advertisers use aren't very secure. An ever better reason to run ad/java blocking and an AV when on the forum.

For sure.  If this becomes a recurring problem, something else will need to be done.  I'm not certain how secure other forum providers are, but I think Forumotion is one of the bigger ones and probably just as [in]secure as the rest.

It would help if the Forumotion folks had screen-shots of the problems and the codes of the inappropriate banner ads.  Could you please post them here or PM me if they're not family-friendly?

Kerrick wrote:or PM me if they're not family-friendly?

Dude, you're getting married, really!?

Kerrick wrote:For sure.  If this becomes a recurring problem, something else will need to be done.  I'm not certain how secure other forum providers are, but I think Forumotion is one of the bigger ones and probably just as [in]secure as the rest.

It would help if the Forumotion folks had screen-shots of the problems and the codes of the inappropriate banner ads.  Could you please post them here or PM me if they're not family-friendly?

OK, as far as I understand how the WWW works. There are pages that get revenue from ads. The ads come from ad companies that host the ads. Sometimes these host sites are hacked and instead of serving normal ads, they sever ads from business that aren't paying the ad companies for advertising and/or they serve malware. This is how people's systems get infected without going to the 'dark' sites. This even happens on 'legit' sites like yahoo and msn every so often. So whoever is providing ads for forum motion is either lying to them or are sloppy with their security. The ads that used to go on my iPhone were horribly egregious. Sometimes I couldn't even get into the CMR with the non-stop rediects to the app store or other pages. I hold low esteem for FM's ad providers.

I should clarify:  If they're straight-up pornographic, please don't send that to anyone.  But from the other threads on Forumotion's page I've seen about similar stuff, it's trashy dating websites and such that aren't appropriate for here but not necessarily R- or X-rated.  I need to submit that to Forumotion so they can clean it up.  These are the general things they ask for:

Forumotion wrote:• Please provide your forum URL for appearance problems.
• Please be clear with your questions or problems. Screenshots, links and new codes you installed, will help solve your issue quickly.
• For connection problems please provide us details including error message, error codes, and link to forum and screenshots if needed.

And with regards to another Forumotion user with similar problems, they said:

Forumotion wrote:Can you provide the link? Right click, copy the link. Also we need the code of the banner. Right click on the banner, inspect the element and then copy the block and put it her into [code] balises please. I'm asking you that so that we can identify the provider of this ad and inform him that it is inappropriate.

Thanks all!

d@v!d wrote:

Kerrick wrote:For sure.  If this becomes a recurring problem, something else will need to be done.  I'm not certain how secure other forum providers are, but I think Forumotion is one of the bigger ones and probably just as [in]secure as the rest.

It would help if the Forumotion folks had screen-shots of the problems and the codes of the inappropriate banner ads.  Could you please post them here or PM me if they're not family-friendly?

OK, as far as I understand how the WWW works. There are pages that get revenue from ads. The ads come from ad companies that host the ads. Sometimes these host sites are hacked and instead of serving normal ads, they sever ads from business that aren't paying the ad companies for advertising and/or they serve malware. This is how people's systems get infected without going to the 'dark' sites. This even happens on 'legit' sites like yahoo and msn every so often. So whoever is providing ads for forum motion is either lying to them or are sloppy with their security. The ads that used to go on my iPhone were horribly egregious. Sometimes I couldn't even get into the CMR with the non-stop rediects to the app store or other pages. I hold low esteem for FM's ad providers.

I see; that makes sense.  Proboards is the only other major forum company I'm very familiar with but we may need to investigate whether moving to them or another forum company would be best then.  Are there many users here with experience on other forum providers?  Have you had any issues with the ads?

We can move back to EZ Boards where we were hacked by Anonymous!  What fun!!!