Anyone gotten malware or redirects here lately?

Post by **Winston** » September 27th, 2009, 5:00 pm

Hi all,
Now that I'm in the states, I've experienced what some of you are talking about when you say that the ads here sometimes redirect you to other sites. Once they do, if you click the back browser, it redirects you again. You gotta closed the browser/tab and reopen it again to stop the redirect ad.

Anyhow, I've had it with clicksor. Every time they fix a hacking ad, it just comes back again. This has happened five times now. I googled this problem and it turns out others are having it too. Clicksor refuses to permanently fix it, or they are too dumb to know how. So they waste my time asking me to trace the IP and time and URL so they can track it down, every few days, as if I worked for them, yet they don't pay me or give me any credit for doing this over and over again for them without end. It's not fair, and it's wrong.

I'm going to write a letter to their CEO asking them to either permanently fix this problem, or let me cash out my earnings right now, if they can't, so I can change to a different ad system that doesn't have such problems.

Sheesh. I don't get them. They'd rather see their company go down than fix this problem? All they have to do is contract some programmers to change the script code to prevent ads from hacking sites. Other adware programs can do that, so why can't they?

I'll remove the ads soon, so you guys don't have to deal with it anymore.

Sorry for this mess with Clicksor.

jamesbond · Post by **jamesbond** » September 28th, 2009, 2:00 pm

I am glad you noticed this Winston. It has been a pain in the butt for a while now.

Post by **Winston** » October 11th, 2009, 12:30 am

I've finally composed it. Here is the ultimatum letter I'm going to send Clicksor. I hope they will listen to reason. I can't believe they continue to let viruses and malware infect their ads and do nothing about it, letting their company sink in ruin.

Dear Anita,
Please forward this letter to the CEO or ower of Clicksor.

Dear Owner of Clicksor,

I am a publisher with you. For the past few months, my website users have complained that your ads have been infecting their computer and redirecting them to other sites against their will. It has happened to me too, so I know firsthand about this. Many computers have a shield or wall that alerts the user that their computer is about to be hacked by a harmful script, and at that point, many have to close their browsers. This is a very serious problem and threat to website users.

Each time this happens, when I report it to your customer service, they ask me for the IP of the user this happened to, and the URL of the site they were redirected to by force. Each time I provide that, they are able to trace the hacking ad and suspend it. However, the next day the same problem happens again, and again and again, etc. I've been through this about five or six times already with your support staff. Yet the problem persists. It is neverending. And it is highly unreasonable for you to expect publishers to continue to allow such malware ads on their site, while your staff never implement a permanent solution.

Your staff has no permanent fix to this horrific problem in your ads, but instead expect me to report the IP and URL of the hacking ads EVERYDAY! That is highly unfair and unreasonable, don't you agree? I am not a paid staff of your company, so what they are asking me to do is essentially WORK FOR YOU for free!!!!!!! Essentially, I would have to spend time and energy everyday to help you track down virus ads, while NOT getting paid for it nor getting any kind of credit whatsoever!

How would YOU feel in such a position? Think about it.

Plus, it's a fruitless endeavor. Tracking down each malware ad from clicksor would be like trying to kill every ant that's going under the fridge toward the rotten egg. It's neverending! Better to just remove the rotten egg, but you don't do that! Instead you ask me to keep stopping the ants, which are neverending! Do you see how futile that is? How long will you let this continue? It's obviously going to ruin your company, but you do nothing about it?! Why?! It's suicidal to your company to let this continue. Don't you care?

The logical solution to this is for you to hire or contract programmers to write a script that does not allow hacking scripts to get through your ads. So why don't you do that? Or just find out why Adsense and Abrite do not have this problem, and emulate whatever they are doing to not have hacking scripts in their ads.

Simple as that. So what's the problem?

Realistically, this cannot continue. I cannot have my website users constantly complain about your ads hijacking their computer over and over again while you have no permanent solution to it other than to ask me to spend lots of time everyday helping you track them down, without any compensation for my time.

Surely you can see that that would be highly unreasonable and unfair, right?

My website traffic is seriously compromised because of this serious problem on your end that isn't getting fixed.

Therefore, I ask that you consider the situation, and if you cannot fix this serious problem permanently, please allow me to cash out my remaining balance on my account, even though I haven't reached the payout amount, due to these circumstances that are no fault of my own, but due to the failure on your end to fix the viruses and malware in your ads. Therefore you give me no choice but to stop using your ads and it would not be fair or right for me to lose my remaining balance through no fault of my own. I'm sure you can understand that that is the only fair and logical solution.

In short, you cannot stop the viruses and malware in your ads, and publishers cannot keep displaying them and angering their users and repelling visitors from their sites. So the only fair solution is to allow them to stop using your ads and cash out their remaining balance, since you will not fix this serious problem, but instead expect us to help you stop "every ant under the fridge" in a neverending fruitless endeavor.

I hope that you will find a permanent fix to this problem immediately, or else do what's only fair.

I await your response.

Thanks,
Winston Wu
HappierAbroad.com

Post by **Winston** » November 3rd, 2009, 3:07 am

Clicksor responded to that letter above, saying that they've sent it to their CEO and he has called for a conference with their IT dept about the virus problems.

That's all they said.

Anyhow, I've removed the Clicksor ads from the forum, and put Adbrite ones and Widgetbucks ones instead, at the top and bottom.

Adbrite I know does not contain ads that redirect users. But not sure about Widgetbucks.

Has anyone has any problems lately, with coming here and then getting redirected against their will to another site?

Or any other virus problems lately, since the ads were changed?

jamesbond · Post by **jamesbond** » November 3rd, 2009, 3:17 am

Recently when I go on Happier Abroad, I have been getting redirected to a site that trys to install a anti-virus scan on my computer. What it really may be trying to do is install a virus on my computer so I have to quickly log off my computer, it won't let me back space to the last page, I am only able to log off. It's a real pain.

wvujimbo7 · Post by **wvujimbo7** » November 3rd, 2009, 5:12 am

Yeah this has happened to me as well... shit, this happened to me back in August when I came to this website on my older computer... luckily, on my newer laptop, my new virus software usually detects this sort of thing right away.

I'm glad I'm not the only one this has happened to...

Post by **Winston** » November 3rd, 2009, 6:08 am

jamesbond and wvujimbo, has it happened in the last few days though? Or the past week?

wvujimbo7 · Post by **wvujimbo7** » November 3rd, 2009, 8:48 am

Winston, it either happened to me yesterday or the day before yesterday... hell, probably both.

jamesbond · Post by **jamesbond** » November 3rd, 2009, 1:26 pm

Vinstonas wrote:jamesbond and wvujimbo, has it happened in the last few days though? Or the past week?

Winston, it has happened to me yesterday.

momopi · Post by **momopi** » November 3rd, 2009, 3:51 pm

Software to install:

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

http://www.zonealarm.com/security/en-us ... wnload.htm

Also, try this browser with all the scripts disabled:
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/

Post by **Winston** » November 5th, 2009, 8:43 am

I've just removed the widgetbucks ads at the bottom, which probably was causing the redirecting, and replaced them with adbrite ads. Adbrite has no history of viruses.

So everyone, let me know in the next few days if the redirecting stops or continues.

Post by **Winston** » November 9th, 2009, 2:19 am

Jamesbond, wvujimbo,

So have you been redirected lately from the adbrite ads here or gotten any virus warnings from here, in the last few days?

Or anyone else?

gmm567 · Post by **gmm567** » November 9th, 2009, 9:05 am

I think I might have picked up a trojan or virus on here last month. My internet connection slowed down to
dial-up speeds, and the Cable people came out 5 times to try to fix it. When I wiped the harddrive, the problem was fixed.

It wasn't necessarily your site; I recognize that. But you're site has given people these problems, and it has driven people away.

Geoff

jtest28 · Post by **jtest28** » November 9th, 2009, 9:12 am

A few months ago the forum redirected me to some spy-ware alert site and I think I clicked on "OK" in an attempt to get rid of the pop-up ,and when I did, it installed spy-ware on my computer that made navigating impossible. I had to format my hard drive to get rid of it. Since then the same pop-ups have been on and sometimes I get redirected to some other page altogether. But lately that has stopped.

Post by **Winston** » November 12th, 2009, 2:10 pm

You guys don't need to wipe out your hard drive. We told you, you can just use Malware Bytes and it will get rid of those viruses or spyware. It's fast, smooth and efficient, and very easy to use. Just a click of a button. Download it here.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Anyhow, so it hasn't happened the past few days right?