BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?

Subject: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 29 Jul 19 - 03:29 AM

I’m suddenly getting a page-width drop-down appearing when I’m in the forum on my iPad, with adverts in it. This is new to me, haven’t had it before.

Is anyone else seeing this? Any knowledge re: how to get rid of it? It’s driving me nuts.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Jul 19 - 03:48 AM

I'm getting it sporadically on my iPhone. Scary things because it can be hard to continue reading the forum without slipping a few mm and clicking on ine by mistake. The content is generally evil shit.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Jul 19 - 05:36 AM

"It’s driving me nuts."

I had that problem once, then I realised that I had a steering wheel sticking out of my underpants...

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 29 Jul 19 - 05:47 AM

:-) :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 29 Jul 19 - 07:30 AM

I occasionally play ' solitaire ' on Microsoft Games, Microsoft continually shows adds before and after, what they are trying to do is blackmail you into paying for the upgraded version which has no adverts, it doesn't work with me.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Stanron
Date: 29 Jul 19 - 08:23 AM

I'm getting an advert at the end of each thread. I've got ab Ad Blocker and I've checked that it is on. How come this happens?

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 29 Jul 19 - 08:47 AM

Something must have changed somewhere. I am getting them on my iPad, noticed them for the first time this morning. Don't know that I would classify "National Express" as evil though.

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 29 Jul 19 - 10:41 AM

Might just be coincience.. but...

Very recently, when Mudcat reapeared after a day offline,
AdBlock suddenly suspiciously became disabled in my chrome browser...

Surely Mudcat wouldn't resort to such naughtyness...???

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Charmion
Date: 29 Jul 19 - 10:59 AM

Backwoodsman, check your browser settings for a "toolbar plug-in".

Updating or installing applications from Adobe (such as Reader), and updating Javascript settings, can sometimes trigger piggy-back installation of parasitic advertising in this form. Before you click OK in the Install dialog box, read all the fine print and uncheck everything except the update you really want.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 29 Jul 19 - 11:33 AM

I was trying to load FileZilla into my new computer yesterday and the site I found for the download apparently had that kind of malware baggage. My security software stopped it from loading and I instead went into an old backup file where there was a 2016 version of the software in a clean download. As soon as I installed that it offered to update to the newest version. Whew! Finding good places for downloading is always a challenge.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 29 Jul 19 - 11:38 AM

I’m on iPad - nothing in Firefox or Safari settings remotely resembling ‘toolbar plug-in’. This only started this morning. Neither Firefox nor Safari apps have updated in the past week, but this is happening on both browsers.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: DaveRo
Date: 30 Jul 19 - 03:26 AM

I don't use an iPad but here on Android Firefox's built-in tracking protection zaps most Google Adsense adverts. I see it's available for Firefox on iOS. Is it turned on?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-ios

And is it really a drop-down - i.e. it overlays the webpage content? If I disable tracking protection I see wide narrow adverts inserted between the content.

Firefox for iOS uses the same underlying engine as Safari so if something has infected that it will happen on both.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 30 Jul 19 - 06:20 AM

I'm not getting any drop-downs in either Safari or Chrome on my iPad (Mini 4), nor on my MacOS laptop. Inside the threads there are small adverts at the top and bottom, but they don't really interfere with reading the text content.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 30 Jul 19 - 06:29 AM

Thanks DaveRo.

Tracking Protection is on?
Yes, it’s a drop-down, it overlays page content. It has an ‘up/down’ arrowhead at the bottom, and hitting it makes the drop-down roll up, out of the way.

I’ve checked every setting I can think of, nothing seems to stop it.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Stanron
Date: 30 Jul 19 - 06:33 AM

Turning off tracking did it. I'm using Ghostery ad blocker. I've only just found out that they make their money by selling tracking and other info to advertising companies. They're very crafty. They have a list of firms that are tracking and beside that a list of ticked boxes under the heading 'Blocked'. Only when I spotted elsewhere on the page a small paragraph, in very small writing, saying "Trust this site" did i realise that I had to un-tick these boxes to actually block them. Tricky!

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 30 Jul 19 - 06:36 AM

Stan, how and where do I do that?

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Stanron
Date: 30 Jul 19 - 06:58 AM

I have a Ghostery icon at the top right of my browser. I click on that and the info window opens up. There are two tabs. One is for simple view and the other is for detailed view. I did it under detailed view.

The screen is split into two vertical columns. In the left hand column there is a circle showing how many sites are active. I had 12 sites tracking, it now shows only 1. Below that is some info and below that are three rectangular buttons. The first now says 'Trust site' and has an un-ticked circle. The second says 'Restrict site' and has a ticked circle and the third says 'Pause Ghostery' and has drop down options about how long the pause will last.

This is how it looks when blocking is on. If you can find a button saying 'Trust Site' and it's ticked, click on it and it should be unticked and the ads will stop. Hope this helps.

Stan

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 31 Jul 19 - 02:29 AM

Mmmmm, i seem to have got rid of the problem in Firefox, but it’s still there in Safari!

Firefox Mobile for iOS has Adblocker built-in, I played around in the Firefox ‘Tracking Protection’ settings and, lo and behold, the Ads drop-down went away. I made the mistake of not keeping a note of the things I changed, so I’m not sure how I did it!

Safari, however, is a different kettle of fish, and I can’t find a way to dump the drop-down. Not such a big problem, as I don’t use Safari very often, but still...maybe an Add-on Blocker is the answer?

If anyone can shed any more light, I’ll be very grateful.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: DaveRo
Date: 31 Jul 19 - 03:39 AM

The key to suppressing them is obviously to find out where they comes from. I know that Mudcat uses Google Adsense (GA) to insert adverts, and I checked that, on Android, Firefox Tracking Protection (TP) suppresses the adverts I see - but they are not pulldowns. (That's with AdBlock Plus turned off; probably ABP will block them on it's own but I didn't check.)

So are these pull-downs generated by GA as implemented on Mudcat or are they inserted by something else? I don't know how you'd find out on an iPad (examine the page source?) but if they don't occur on other sites I'd guess they are generated by GA.

TP uses a blocklist, and has various setting - or it does on desktops:
A closer look at Firefox's Tracking Protection

So I'd guess that by changing the settings you changed the blocklist. Or maybe the blocklist got updated: if these adverts are intermittent it could be that some ad servers are on the list and some not.

Whether an 'external' ad blocker app will stop them on Safari will depend on how it works. Some have whitelists of 'allowed' adverts - but you can usually turn that off and block everything. That's the case with AdBlock Plus which I use. ABP also has an 'acceptable ads' policy - and from your description these would not be acceptable. But I know nothing about ad blockers on iOS.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 31 Jul 19 - 03:50 AM

I had the problem, intermittently, for a day or two but it seems to have disappeared without me doing anything.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Thompson
Date: 31 Jul 19 - 04:22 AM

What kind of evil shit? Car ads?

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 31 Jul 19 - 04:57 AM

Spoke too soon, they are back again. The ad is related to a recently visited web site.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: DaveRo
Date: 31 Jul 19 - 04:09 PM

I borrowed an iPad and saw this. Is that what you mean? It sometimes happened when I scrolled down in a thread. I'm pretty sure it's Adsense generating that.

I don't know if it's new, or restricted to iOS.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 31 Jul 19 - 04:19 PM

Yep, that’s it. It does seem to be Adsense - can it be made to go away I wonder?

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 31 Jul 19 - 04:33 PM

According to what I’ve read on a number of forums, it’s the ‘site owner’ who has signed up for Adsense adverts to appear because they make money from them.

So perhaps a Mod can tell me how to stop them appearing because they’re very annoying and, if I can’t stop them, I’ll be out of here permanently.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 31 Jul 19 - 05:07 PM

Occasionally, I'll click on a news page and find an annoying amount of ads getting in the way of the article I wished to check, but I think the level of advertising on Mudcat is acceptable - which is not to say that I'm a fan of capitalism: "Global Regulationism"

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: DaveRo
Date: 31 Jul 19 - 05:11 PM

It's a pretty modest ad! From your post I'd imagined something much more intrusive. AFAIR it didn't overlay content so much as reduce the content area. Other forums I use have much much much worse.

If I had to display that ad, and the other ones I've seen, it wouldn't bother me - provided they're static. Not on a display the size of that iPad, anyway - I don't know what it looks like on a phone. And you said you've managed to suppress it with Firefox, so that the answer, isn't it?

(It'd be useful to know if Mudcat gets revenue on a per-click or a per-impression basis. If I knew it was per-impression I might whitelist it.)

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: keberoxu
Date: 09 Sep 19 - 04:53 PM

Something just showed up that I didn't know was possible.
I'm at a public computer (local library) using Google Chrome.
I went to a lengthy BS thread and clicked on the small "d"
so as to get only the most recent pages of posts,
with the newest at the top, and so on.

Two posts in -- that's the second most recent post --

and there is a big fat advertisement
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE POST,
separating two chunks of text.
You can click it shut -- I did --
and it said that
Google had shut the advert notice.

What's it doing
IN THE MIDDLE OF A POST??!

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Sep 19 - 03:28 AM

What kind of evil shit?

It was a few weeks ago but I think what I had in mind was too-good-to-be-true clickbait for malware downloads.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Sep 19 - 09:51 PM

keberoxu uses a public library so they have have the computers set in such a way that the addition of an ad blocker is difficult, that I sent directions on how she might accomplish that.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Rain Dog
Date: 11 Sep 19 - 07:40 AM

Today has been the first time I have had ads appear in threads. Never happened before. Using Microsoft Edge on a desktop computer.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: keberoxu
Date: 11 Sep 19 - 08:52 PM

And for the little it's worth:

presently have access to the guest 'business center'
of a Hampton Inn,
and THOSE guest computers have been
all outfitted with all kinds of whatevers
that shut you off, that reboot,
that will stop you from going wherever and looking at whateber,
and so on.

And when I get to Mudcat, go to the BS section,
and click on the same long thread in the same fashion
as described in earlier posts to this thread --
NO intrusive adverts whatever,
especially not in the middle of existing post text.

Subject: RE: BS: Advertising Drop-Downs? WTF?
From: Jeri
Date: 11 Sep 19 - 09:04 PM

You know, if you would download a damned ad-blocker, it would solve your problems and you could quit complaining.

Oh darn - not THAT.

Seriously, I have two browser that don't have an ad-blocker, and one that does. Some sites have nag screens that tell me to please turn it off. I leave, and find what I want to read elsewhere.

And for the record, mods have absolutely nothing to do with how Mudcat works, and yes, Max can afford to keep the site up because of the revenue from the ads.