Something very curious has occurred twice now. I go into dexterity forums for the first time of the day, and then I get a popup add, after I close it and after i'm done surfing the forums I try to go to another webpage, and IE tells me there was an error and if i would like to send an error report. Which then restarts IE now when I close IE, I notice that there's an icon on my desktop and in my start menu for some casino. I would like to know if anyone has experienced anything like this?

Keith

I've been looking at these forums for a while now and have never had a popup ad.

I haven't seen a popup ad for months...oh, yeah, I'm using Mozilla now. ;)

Sounds like you probably have been infected by some webpage with a nasty IE plugin.

I can assure you that there are no popup ads anywhere on this site, and there never have been. You've probably installed some kind of spyware. There are several programs out there that will install browser plug-ins that will display popups. It's a pretty devious marketing tactic if you ask me. I've also heard that these things can be very difficult to uninstall.

if you have messenger running, that's where it's coming from.
http://www.stopmessengerspam.com/

pat.

Originally posted by Dexterity
I can assure you that there are no popup ads anywhere on this site, and there never have been. You've probably installed some kind of spyware. There are several programs out there that will install browser plug-ins that will display popups. It's a pretty devious marketing tactic if you ask me. I've also heard that these things can be very difficult to uninstall.

indeed, but lavasoft are our friends and made Ad-Aware : http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

Install it, run it, it should detect about 20-30 spyware scripts installed most likely.

You probably have a spyware app installed. Some spyware (I think it's gator) actually does something that I think is pretty dirty. You can buy ads for a particular website. So, if I thought my target customer is pretty much the same type of customer as Dexterity's customers, I could buy ad rights to dexterity.com from the company. Anytime someone who has that spyware installed visits dexterity.com, my ad would show up. I'm not saying that is what's happening, but it's possible.

I got my first messenger service popup the other day. Scared the daylights out of me.... I'm not very experienced with 2000 and thought I must have got some horrible virus/spyware.

Thankfully my other half knew what to do to make it go away. Bad! Bad service!

I agree. The popups are coming from spyware. Use adaware by lavasoft to remove the spy app and run popupcop to stop popups in general. Invaluable app.

Firstly let me clarify I didn't assume Dexterity had started using popup ads, it was just odd to me. Secondly thanks to Akura for pointing out ad-aware to me, it seemed to clean me up. It was indeed a spyware program which I have utterly no idea of how I managed to get that, I guess I just need to be a bit more careful where I surf. Thanks guys!

Steve - You can delete this thread now ;-)

Keith

indeed, but lavasoft are our friends and made Ad-Aware : http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

Install it, run it, it should detect about 20-30 spyware scripts installed most likely.



Yikes!! 1 registry entry and 57 files!! All of the files were tracking cookies instead of scripts, but still!

Thanks Akura!!

if you guys experience a lot of pop ups then you could have spyware go to Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/) , if it stops in the middle of the scan, run the advanced mode and exclude c2.lop from the scan.

I use Netscape 7.1, it has a built-in pop-up blocker, works great.

The only "popu-ad" I've seen here was when I tried "order" button for any game and then pressed "back" - I was asked why I didn't purchase that game. :)

There is a popup feedback form (no ads) on the order form. It only works if javascript is turned on. If you try to leave the order form before ordering, you'll see a very simple feedback form asking why you choose not to buy right now. The feedback people provide here is very valuable and has led to many improvements of the order form, not to mention that most people provide their email address, so we can respond to ordering questions quickly and save a few more sales before they're lost.

Originally posted by papillon
I got my first messenger service popup the other day. Scared the daylights out of me.... I'm not very experienced with 2000 and thought I must have got some horrible virus/spyware.

Thankfully my other half knew what to do to make it go away. Bad! Bad service!

The fact that the messenger got through at all (i got them too, back when I was clueless about networks) means that you are running without a firewall. Dangerous! Turning of the messenger service is just treating the symptoms, not the cause. Get yourself something like the free version of zonealarm, it's a nice free firewall with no spyware