Ad/Spyware?

“Is it just me

or do you others pickup problems after a few minutes here at TT

which require fixing in order to continue?”

“it's just you.”

“It' ain't just you. I can live with all the active content (banner ads, animation, my CPU pegging as things load). The forced pop-up ad that started the other day is almost intolerable for me. I hate those things to the point where if I have to get rid of more than 3-4 a day on a site I'll seldom visit it.”

“Oh, and the adware/spyware thing is awful. I haven't seen a lot of it on this site but I block popups. Are there a lot of popups that want to load browser ActiveX Plug-Ins?”

“I have no problems with the site at all. Maybe a switch over to firefox would help. If you got continuing issues with this stuff you may wanna do a search for rootkit software.”

“Naaa, I'll live with it. The site owner needs to make money and if sponsors think that annoying me with banners and pop-ups is worth paying for then I am happy for them to fund this site. It's that Circuit City popup that is hacking me off. I'll get over it.”

“I've been having a lot of miscellaneous problems lately. Since this is the main site that I visit, I have to have suspicions.”

“i have all kinds of ad/spyware removers running, and I don't have a problem. and yeah...what Jimmy san says...Matt got to make a living so I take the little ads on here and hope they don't start singing or hopping around again.”

“There shouldn't be any adware or spyware anywhere on the site. If there is, tell me. Also, TT should not have any pop-ups. Other pages on the site do have pop-unders, but on TT you shouldn't see any of those. If you do, please tell me.”

“Circuit City has a pop-up.”

“I never see ANY popups -- and I'm running several versions of IE and Firefox on multiple computers.”

“It's rare, but they're there. I see them with IE. My firefox blocks them.”

“There is definitely a Circuit City pop-up.”

“Does Firefox block them? They are prolly Shockwave or Flash so if you don't have a plugin loaded in Firefox (or IE for that matter) you won't see them but not because they are blocked. I know most browsers will let you shut off ALL content that has Shocwave of Flash but I am not aware of a blocker that does just popups but lets other things through.”

“Uh oh ... hey, I didn't do nothing!”

“Kewl!”

“Bump.”

“OK, Matt. I've got someone on "ignore," but this person keeps popping-up anyway.”

“Stick to one username and that problem might go away...”

“See, Matt, there the person is again! LOL.

A good sugestion, bitpusher, but how do I get this person to stick to one name. I can't even do that myself. Oh, I see, you mean me!”

“LOL Violin”

“There, Matt, see what I mean. Putting Violin on hold does no good. He still keeps popping-up. He won't even take a hint!”

“I wasn't talking about popups

even though Verizon just made and all day has made a dramatic appearance

its the 'tribalfusion' and other things.”

“I use several advertising companies. Tribalfusion, Burst, Fastclick, Casale, Google. Each of these companies may use cookies to track which ads are being shown, but they shouldn't install any type of program on your computer.”

“Does Firefox block them? They are prolly Shockwave or Flash so if you don't have a plugin loaded in Firefox (or IE for that matter) you won't see them but not because they are blocked. I know most browsers will let you shut off ALL content that has Shocwave of Flash but I am not aware of a blocker that does just popups but lets other things through. - pitts

Yes, with the right plug-in, they are blocked.”

“I've been using only firefox for over a year now, and it doesn't have active x like IE , only java. I have the flash and shockwave plug ins, but haven't seen any of the ads that pop up or under, only the regular page loaded ads, so I guess there using active x exploits to get in.”

“That Circuit City pop-up is getting REALLY annoying (I've got pop-up blocking, too). I was looking at buying a new stereo receiver from them or Best Buy this weekend - guess which one's getting my business on Saturday?

And on other thing - in the last few weeks this site has gotten REALLY slow at loading, both the home page and the TT page. I've cleaned out all the temp files, cookies, etc., but it still unusually slow.”

“I got a Sprint pop-up this morning, and pop-ups are usually blocked.”

“I disabled Shockwave Flash this morning in my web browser and now the site is working much better. You can do this in IE in Tools -> Internet Options -> Programs -> Manage Add-Ons... -> Add-Ons Currently Loaded by Internet Explorer (drop-down box) and then select Shockwave Flash and select Disable. IE does complain that the web site I am viewing wants to display content from a Plug-In that is not loaded, but my CPU no longer pegs and the banner ads now seem limited to images (no music, games, only animated GIFs, etc). No annowing Flash pop-ups (so far).”

“"Fastclick" is the software that my spyware/adware is always removing from my system.”

“I never get the Fastclick adware but know lots of people have to constantly remove it from their computer. Fastclick also has a cookie and it sits among the million or so data-mining cookies used to correlate your browser to your identity. Marketing people are very smart and I maintain with their ability to use cookies and correlate data across multiple web sites that the Internet isn't really the anonymous world people think that it is. Take a look at the contents of the persistant cookies on your computer some day... you'll be shocked.”

“I use & like PC-Cillin but like most companies, customer service people leave a LOT to be desired. I purchase this product every year. I purchased the 2005 version set to expire 12-21-2005. So in November, I purchase the 2006 version which should expire in Dec of 2006. They still have the expiration as 2005 & not getting thru to them that it should expire in 2006. Why don't companies pay a little more & get some quality people in their customer service depts? A lot of these companies alienate customers with shoddy service.”

“What's up with the advertisement at the bottom of my Internet Explorer screen? It covers my scroll button. I know I can click on the bar to scroll a whole page or scroll with my mouse, but it's irritating.



Just for grins, I checked to see if it was just IE or if it was in Firefox, too. Confirmed it was also in Firefox.



What's up with this, Matt?”

“Please see "Hey Matt" thread.”

“Firefox didn't have the scroll arrow problem.”

“BTW,

I think I have resolved my computer problems

and it was a LAN settings issue, not the tracking cookies here.”

“StoveStomper, no Firefox didn't have the problem with the scroll bar.”