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Greg

Senior Member
I got a few random popup ads from this site (while logging in) for totally non-music things. Maybe it was a glitch?

Also for the record, I think there is an uncomfortable amount of advertising. To an obnoxious degree. I understand that this site needs adrev to stay up but this much? Maybe it's just the layout but, it's really excessive and distracting (imo)
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If you are using a Mac, use a free application called adware medic. it will detect any adware installed and remove them.
 
sherief83 said:
If you are using a Mac, use a free application called adware medic. it will detect any adware installed and remove them.
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I have it but was told to turn it off or the site might not work properly? I don't wanna jump to brash conclusions but it seems to me that making adrev has become more important than making a good forum.
 
Confirming it's no glitch. Clicking on certain buttons gives a popup such as:

https://vda.gtarcade.com/?q=150612rBbLwP6&sid=7114722

https://ig8zz.super-promo.7053.info/?sov=62706301&hid=egqqeeoioiogo&noaudio=1&nodl=nodl&nopc=nopc&redid=912&gsid=47&id=XNSX.012492891024582784434-r912-t47
 
THIS is certainly NOT our doing, and I truly despise these types of pop-ups. Give us a few days, we're looking into every single item that has been brought to our attention.

Sorry for any inconvenience,

Andre
 
Not to jump into any conclusions, but did you scan your machine recently?
That looks like typical spam popups you get if your machine is infected with something.
(I believe this was what Sherief meant - not adblock)

I'm asking because i have yet to see any popups from this site.
 
Robert Larsson said:
Not to jump into any conclusions, but did you scan your machine recently?
That looks like typical spam popups you get if your machine is infected with something.
(I believe this was what Sherief meant - not adblock)

I'm asking because i have yet to see any popups from this site.
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Thank you Robert, that was a great contribution! :)

Greg, I fully trust MalwareBytes to do this kind of scan. Go for the FREE option, it's powerful enough for this. And let us know if this helped.

Regards,

Andre
 
Just FYI, today after visiting the forum and replying to a few posts, I closed my browser, and began work in Photoshop...and then I received my first pop up EVER in the bottom right corner of the screen (for an online gambling site). I ran MalwareBytes and it found nothing. I do not use nor have ever used AdBlock. So it would appear to me something is going on here and it's not just a coincidence. Any suggestions?
 
Greg said:
Edit, It's not malware, got popups on 3 different computers so far, all OSX Yosemite with clean scans.
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Sorry this happened, Greg,

And this ONLY happened after you accessed:

- the portal or
- the forum or
- both

You haven't accessed other sites that are gaming sites, media, etc. Usually these will pop-up very quickly on your screen, though. If this happened when you left a site, this would be their doing too.

BUT I'll certainly see if I can find something. The portal is uber protected, and as far as Xenforo, I will look into it. This may take a few days, as developers there are not spending a lot of time on the support forum. Could you shoot me an email Thursday if I haven't given an update?

Regards,

Andre
 
My pop-ups occured on a PC. My Mac Pro has, so far not exhibited similar behavior. I am using Firefox as a browser on both machines, and "block popups" is ticked on both machines. I have definitely not accessed any gaming sites or any such thing, and as I reported, the first pop up occurred right after spending time on the forum.
 
playz123 said:
My pop-ups occured on a PC. My Mac Pro has, so far not exhibited similar behavior. I am using Firefox as a browser on both machines, and "block popups" is ticked on both machines. I have definitely not accessed any gaming sites or any such thing, and as I reported, the first pop up occurred right after spending time on the forum.
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playz123 - "Block popups" won't work depending on how the popup is coded but I am not getting any popups. I suspect the site that created the popup was a site that you visited besides vi-control in the same browsing session. I have seen some news sites (many which look reputable) and unreputable search engine splash pages create popup windows in that manner, and most open behind your current window so you do not see them until far later.

I worked in IT for many, many years and have seen almost with every single change a 'change syndrome' where any change is made and any completely unrelated issue that an end user has is blamed on the change, it is due to people's innate fear of changes causing issues. Only in a small percentage of cases are those issues actually related, and in most cases they are coincidental. I believe this is what we are seeing here.

The simple logic is that these popups would be happening to many more users if they were actually caused by this site. The low number of reports is suggestive of an unrelated coincidental issue rather than some underlying site issue.

There is a bit of a test you can do:
1. On your PC, open your browser and browse around to a bunch of different sites that you visit besides vi-control. Close your browser and see if a popup has triggered.
2. Open your browser and visit only vi-control, browse around for a while, do some things, and close the browser without visiting any other sites (even in other windows). Close it and see if a popup has triggered.

If both 1 and 2 trigger popups, the issue is either some kind of adware in the browser, or some toolbar that is installed, or the start page (some software installers change your start page to an unreputable one, java updates are notorious for changing start page to ask.com which might give you banner ads).

If only 1 triggers popups, it is obviously a different site that is triggering the popups.

If only 2 triggers popups, it's still unlikely to be caused by this site, but it becomes a possibility. However, it would have to be some part of the site that most people are not using, or some particular post, that is triggering the popup.

If neither triggers popups, it was probably a different site triggering the popups that you visited the last time this happened.

You can also revisit your steps through the sites when this happened by going into your browser history. Going through the pages you visited one by one can potentially lead you to which one created the popup.

BTW, Greg- your issue is highly suggestive of either installed malware (sometimes posing as a browser addon, check chrome add ons if you use chrome, or firefox addons if you use firefox, etc.) a rootkit infestation, which means it can be cloaked and undetectable by most software. This is a very serious issue. Malware in the form of browser addons (perhaps posing as toolbars) have the ability to rewrite links to redirect them to advertisements or the wrong site when you click on them (when you go back and click on it again, it opens in the correct site); alternatively, they can open a popup in addition to what they are supposed to open. Malware in the form of rootkits is much worse - it has the same behavior but operates in all web browsers and can be quite tricky to remove because they can make themselves invisible to scans. There is a site called "Bleeping Computer" which provides free support for rootkit removal (not sure if they help with OSX as well though).
 
@mducharme, many thanks for your detailed reply and suggestions. To begin, I can reassure you that I am quite aware of all you suggested. I certainly may not have your level of expertise, but I have been building, repairing and trouble shooting computers for roughly 30 years, so find myself quite in agreement with what you've kindly offered. More importantly, I have been able to keep pop ups off my computer.... until the one I saw this week. No, I did not visit any other sites that day before visiting the forum.

In any case, I am pleased to report that pop ups have not reoccurred since then, so I guess whatever caused that one will remain a mystery for now (and in the long term it probably won't be important). What I will take away from this thread is Andre's recommendation about MalwareBytes. Certainly a great little program. Thank you again as well for your time, input and assistance; much appreciated. Cheers!
 
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