• Feeling isolated? You're not alone.

    Join 20,000+ people who understand exactly how your day went. Whether you're newly diagnosed, self-identified, or supporting someone you love – this is a space where you don't have to explain yourself.

    Join the Conversation → It's free, anonymous, and supportive.

    As a member, you'll get:

    • A community that actually gets it – no judgment, no explanations needed
    • Private forums for sensitive topics (hidden from search engines)
    • Real-time chat with others who share your experiences
    • Your own blog to document your journey

    You've found your people. Create your free account

The fake virus warning advertisements

J

JayLapointe

Well-Known Member
I just wanted to warn anyone that doesn't have a paid membership on this site that some of the advertisements are dubious and will actually redirect your web browsers to fake virus warnings. It'll kick forward to a new page with alerts from "norton" saying your computer is infected and to take action. It is a credit card phishing scam. I'm not sure if the site admin have any control of which particular adds get fetched, but I've seen some folks falling for other online scams and thought I should warn folks about this one. It's doubly annoying in that sometimes you'll be halfway through a post and it'll kick forward. So not only do you have to deal with the fake virus scam, but you've also lost everything you've been writing. This is actually the 3rd attempt at writing this post for that very reason.

Anyways play safe folks, just know that if you are on this site and your web browser starts suddenly claiming you've got a virus, you don't. I've seen this same sort of thing happen on other sites, but not with the tenacity or frequency it happens here.
 
Hi @JayLapointe,
Thanks for flagging this. That doesn't sound like the adverts that we should be getting. However, I will flag it to the ad network.
As far as the kicking forwards are concerned, unless you're clicking on it, adverts on this site cannot do this. As a general precaution, I suggest running your antivirus and checking which browser plugins you have. It sounds suspiciously like a Chrome Extension my mum had not too long ago, which she got from installing some software on her computer. She started getting lots of virus and crypto ads showing

If you do see this again on the site please can you take a screenshot and send it to me along with the link to the page you were looking at, as I'll include this in what I sent to the ad network.
 
Satal said:
Hi @JayLapointe,
Thanks for flagging this. That doesn't sound like the adverts that we should be getting. However, I will flag it to the ad network.
As far as the kicking forwards are concerned, unless you're clicking on it, adverts on this site cannot do this. As a general precaution, I suggest running your antivirus and checking which browser plugins you have. It sounds suspiciously like a Chrome Extension my mum had not too long ago, which she got from installing some software on her computer. She started getting lots of virus and crypto ads showing

If you do see this again on the site please can you take a screenshot and send it to me along with the link to the page you were looking at, as I'll include this in what I sent to the ad network.
Click to expand...
Yeah I've only encountered it with this specific website. Only from a PC browser, in my case Chrome. and I've had it happen numerous times on my PC and Laptop both. I'll take a screen shot next time and post the example.
 
@Satal I did want to mention that just to be cautions I went ahead and double checked my extensions/plugins. Apart from the two I knew I was running, Adobe for pdf, and google docs, I wasn't running anything else that may have been causing the redirects. One of the many roles I have at my job is managing IT, so I'm pretty cautious and safe online. But wanted to let you know I had ruled that out, since you'd suggested it as a potential source.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New Threads

Top Bottom