BANNER ADs Problem RESOLVED. thanks Bizhat.

[blacknwhite]

WARNING! DON'T accidentally click on banner ads here! FAST-acting "continuous reboot" virus!

I did (yes, I'm sure it was here, it was real obvious, no doubt), and spent a great deal of time trying to remove the fastest-acting virus I've ever had, and was unsuccessful. I couldn't remove it, so I deleted the entire hard drive directory on my PC, and "flashed" back to the last-saved Norton Ghost image from 6 months ago.

So, about a half hour later, I've lost the last 6 months worth of emails, internet bookmarks, and all "software configuration" settings, but I'm back online, so I'm lucky! Thanks to Norton Ghost... or else, I'd be spending a WEEK trying to find all my installation disks to reinstall the Windows operating system and all drivers and software packages manually.

So BE CAREFUL & DON'T LET YOUR MOUSE go anywhere near the banner ads!

- Bob

[bancho]

Holy crap!
Why does it has to be here then?????

What about macs? I think its time to buy new external disk and start up my Time Machine...

[Viewmaster]

Blimey, think I'll give this forum a miss if it's virusated!
'Bye
Albert.

[cuttercollector]

That's odd. The banner ad is gone. It was there for a fiew days but now is not. I never clicked on it as it was the type that seems suspicious with little annoying audio bleeps animation and "you have won" crap.
Sorry about what happend to others !

[blacknwhite]

I never clicked on it as it was the type that seems suspicious with little annoying audio bleeps animation and "you have won" crap.

I *never* click on banner adds on *any* sites, because I *know* they're frequently virus-infested.

But that day, I was going too fast, and I "mis-fired" with my mouse pointer. The ONE TIME, it got me!...

- Bob

[Steve E.]

Wwwwwwow. if it happened here, and I do believe that it is possible, that is awful. Not that I could have prevented it, but as the moderator, I am sorry.

Are the banner ads an ongoing thing? should we consider migrating this site to someplace where that can't happen?

It's a free site. Perhaps such ads are an inherent risk of its freebie status.

Any ideas?

[blacknwhite]

Any ideas?

Well, for my $.02 ....

I'd prefer to keep this a freebie site, and just for everyone to be aware, that when you take your mouse pointer up to click on View Private Messages, just be careful not to accidentally click the banners.

- Bob

[Steve E.]

I'm just wondering if anyone knows of a place I might migrate the site to. This banner thing is a horror. Eventually other people might make that same mistake even by accident. And if it was a "pay" site, how much would that cost per year? I mean, heck, I'd fund it myself if it was cheap enough.

Tech support here is nearly non-existent. It sort of seems like phpbb might have deteriorated or been bought out by sleazes.

By the way, thanks to Dr Dub we are now:

http://www.lathetrolls.com/

so even if it moves it should be easy to find. I think I can get the site backed up so we wouldn't lose the old posts if we moved.

Anyone know anything?

[cd4cutter]

Steve, you might want to check out the following forum/discussion board:

http://sonoraman.proboards107.com/index.cgi?

The site, the Old Time Victrola Music Message Board (OTVMMB), deals primarily with acoustic phonos which our readers might also find interesting, but it has been stable for a number of years and the administrator, Dan Gilmore, is quite knowledgeable about the proboards host and how it works. He could provide you with a lot of tips and history of his experience on the board. The site is very versatile with all or most of the features of this phppb host.

[Simon]

Hi Steve

I run a few forums, one on PHPBB and have server space as I run my own server at home.

Backups done every night.

If you need space - ask me.

[MordEth]

Are the banner ads an ongoing thing? [snip] It's a free site. Perhaps such ads are an inherent risk of its freebie status.

Steve,

You’re exactly correct here—you should always be afraid of banner adverts run on any free site. For example, Yahoo! was serving malicious ads (2008.04.28), Expedia and Rhapsody had rogue advertising issues (2008.01.30), MSN was punting scareware (2007.02.21), Yahoo! attempts to infect MySpace and PhotoBucket (2007.09.11), etc.

And these are just the results I remember reading off the top of my head in the first page of a Google search from one particular tech publication. I got 218 results from theregister.co.uk.

~ MordEth

[MordEth]

should we consider migrating this site to someplace where that can't happen?

If you already have web hosting (which certainly appears to be the case from the activation e-mail that I received, and is part of the reason I’m replying), you may want to do a backup of your board (which is very easy with phpBB), and install phpBB on your web space. This allows you to keep all of your posts, all of your users, and migrate everything at once.

Or you could convince your users to get Firefox and install the AdBlock add-on for it; with the proper filters you never see advertising again.

If you’re still using Internet Explorer, and care about the security of your computer, you should switch immediately—you don’t have to click an ad to be infected; you just need to browse to the right web page with a bit of malicious code that happens to correspond to one of the many known holes in Internet Explorer [important info from that link: Unpatched: 27% (9 of 33 Secunia advisories), most severe of which is moderately critical]...

...so it’s not like you have to actively try to infect IE. There are plenty of known exploits out there.

Hopefully this helps you guys—I want to thank cd4cutter for pointing me over here to learn a bit more about recording...most of what I know anything about is the internet and computers. So I figured I’d offer a bit of my knowledge since I don’t see myself having a lot to contribute in the near future.

Sorry about having to break my response into 2 posts—it was complaining about too many links, and they’re all informative in my opinion.

~ MordEth

[Steve E.]

This site (bizhat) responded to my complaints and removed the ad banner for free. yayy. thank you Bizhat.