[Forum] Problem with pop ups, members complaining?

[myu1]

Other than Google Adsense and two affiliate adverts which I just installed, we don't have anything else on the forum.

It's been working fine, even upgraded from VB3 to VB4 about 8 months ago.

All working fine until today, member complaining about a pop up. I asked them to run spyware software but many more are saying they to now have the same problem.

It's a football forum, we don't get spam because we use a security question and it stopped.

I've now disabled all html from the usergroup as well.

I found the pop up site's IP address and have blocked it in the VB banning options, will do so on the server as well.

Most of my members already use Adblock and this will make the people who don't, download it as well to stop the pop ups. I rely on Google Adsense to keep the site running, prizes and donating to charity.

What can I do and is there other webmaster's having the same issue as me.

Below is a thread which was started by one of the members. I deleted one post, advising to download Adblock.

http://www.wearetherangersboys.com/forum/showthread.php?150298-Pop-up-when-using-WATRB&p=963045#post963045

Any help would be great.

Thank you.

[Wayne Luke]

Not to ask the obvious but you're sure the popup originated from your site and not from a different tab in the browser?

Generally a popup requires HTML and Javascript to be inserted into the page. You would need to get the specific URL and then compare the templates against the defaults provided when the software is installed. If you didn't make the change, remove it.

[myu1]

Cheers, will find out from the users.

[LorianP]

We have the exact same issue.

Running the latest patched vb, never had any problems before and now in the last few days we are getting significant numbers of members (over 15 today so far) getting hit with 'take a survey and win a free ipad' popups.

We run ads from AdSense and Criteo.
I've asked members to provide feedback on which tabs/threads they have open.

[Adam H]

Have discovered the same thing on a couple of boards, the redirect comes from here :

http://dailysurveycenter.the-arcade.com/?sov=62423201&hid=hntjhhnjlxpjh

A quick google search has brought this up :

http://www.web-sniffer.me/en/sniffer/893535-www.top-free-gadgets.info.html

Ive checked through templates and plugins but couldnt see anything obvious, Google adsense is installed along with Contextweb ( pulsepoint ) whom ive contacted to ensure its not something they are or their advertisers are inserting.

According to the members its very random , only happens once and generally happens from the "whats new" activity feed but has happened else where on the forum .

[Hartmut]

Could it be that the advertisers have implemented something that generates the popup?

[Adam H]

Could it be that the advertisers have implemented something that generates the popup?

That my first thought , hence contacting contextweb (awaiting reply now ) . Although google on the other hand are strict in what they allow so if people are running google adsense alone i highly doubt it would be generated through them. ( but obviously not impossible )

[Trevor Hannant]

Check your browser add-ons also - have seen a few reports of ads being shown to some users but they relate to something added to the browser rather than the site.

[Adam H]

Check your browser add-ons also - have seen a few reports of ads being shown to some users but they relate to something added to the browser rather than the site.

Will relay that back and ask members what add-ons they have installed, if we can find a common denominator it could be something we can look into. It has only started happening in the past couple of days. My first thought was localised spyware and malware on their machines so we went through the whole cleaning procedures .

[Trevor Hannant]

A couple of people have had this through the "Complitly" extension and an AdMedia add-on also

[LorianP]

We now have about 20 members reporting this problem.
It seems to exclusively happen on IE.

I use Firefox/Chrome all day and have never seen it but the second I switched to IE10 and opened our forum (http://www.uk-muscle.co.uk) I got 2 of the survey popups.

My machine is clear of malware according to Windows Defender and Spybot.

[Adam H]

I still cant personally replicate it , In any browser. ( just checked yours aswell lorain and couldnt replicate it ) but more members are coming forward saying its happening. Nothing at the moment in similarities of plugins or browsers at the moment , every thing is random.

Feel free to browse around our forum and see if you get any popups, if you do please screen shot it and let me know as much info as possible.

http://www.tottenhamhotspurs.tv/content/

Adam

[Hartmut]

Can you turn off the advertisings for a short while in order to see if your users keep on complaining?

[Adam H]

If there is no other resolution that may be something i can try but it will have to wait until tomorrow as it means editing all the templates as most of our advertising is template notification rather than using the advertising system or external ad server. So something id rather not do but if no one has come up with the problem by this time tomorrow ill do it. Id really like to be able replicate the problem for myself so i can test some things but i cant even replicate it.

[Wayne Luke]

Please go through the steps in this blog entry: https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/entr...vBulletin-Site

However a brief look at your URL didn't show anything that indicates your site is actually compromised.