Banners

TLCDad wrote: Hi all,

If you ever receive a pop-up or your media players starts on its own, or anything similar, please let me know. When this happens please tell me the name of the banner displayed on the top and bottom of the current page.

I will ban the banner ASAP. Unfortuantly as new banners are added to the que by our provider some of these slip through but I take action as soon as I notice them.

TLCDad replied: Also, please do not use a pop-up blocker. If your popup blocker has the option (GoogleBar for example) you can tell it to allow popups from this site. Please do this for both www.parentingclub.com and forms.parentingclub.com. I am not asking you to do this to annoy you. LOL I am asking so I can get rid of any banners that try to send a popup even though it is against the exclusion setting with our provider.

Don't worry this should not happend often at all. I want it to be a pleasure to view the forums and I will do everything I can to make that happen.

Kaitlin'smom replied: well since I am not allowed to have a pop-up blocker at work I will watch for them....have not seen any in a long time, your doing great with keeping them away ...if I do see any I will let you know.

Thanks!

kimberley replied: i got a security warning certificate pop up for Gain publishing.

jdkjd replied: I keep getting a box that asks if I want to download stuff from IBIS...

KatieLeigh79 replied: Is this what has been happening that tells me I needed to install some search bar or what not? I figured it was something you guys had going and accepted it, now it likes to crash the computer - not something I should have accepted? *lol* But any time before I finally accepted if I told it no the forum would close.

Jamison'smama replied:
I get this one all the time as well.

amynicole21 replied: I keep getting the media player pop-up and virus alerts when the banner that says win a $50 gift card to Red Lobster when you answer a few questions.

jem0622 replied:

Me three...or four. I may have lost track. LOL.

TLCDad replied: Ok I blocked the banner from IBIS (it was the websearch bar banner which through me off track). It should stop displaying within an hour or so.

Thanks everyone

KatieLeigh79 replied: Yaee thanks TLCDad Now the question is, I have uninstalled it through add/remove programs, wiped it from my reg but every time I restart it tells me it comes back - where else could the little bugger be hiding because every few hours it still locks up my computer or closes the forum, thanks for any advice you can give My DH is a sysadmin for a company downtown and even he is clueless as to why it keeps reappearing!

TLCDad replied: Hmmm I did not think it was that bad. You might have other things on your computer too...

Try downloading and running AdaWare which gets rid of all spyware/junkware on your computer. It is a great program. I have a feeling you have something else also on your computer that might be blocking complete uninstalls. This program should take care of it.

Here is the link:

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/

Let me know how many programs it finds. You will probably be surprised. A lot of junk like this gets installed when you install simple programs such as Instant messagengers etc.

Please note (disclaimer) this program will make modifications to your registery which could cause problems but I have yet to see or hear of it failing or causing any problems. You should see your computer run faster once all the junk is cleared out.

Mom2Boyz replied:
OMG!!! I was having lots of trouble with my computer too, so I downloaded this.
861 Files it found!!!!! Good grief, no wonder this thing was going sooooo slow. Thanks for the link TLCdad

TLCDad replied:
Your welcome.

Yep. You would be surprised how much junk gets installed even without you knowing. This program is great. I recommend running it every so often.

Did your computer get noticably better once alll those files were removed?

Mom2Boyz replied:
Yes, it's going quite a bit faster now. Now I just have to figure out how to get rid of this wallon virus that I somehow got

amynicole21 replied: I've had another round of "viruses" found, but it's just the adware programs that change my home page. This time, the banner on the bottom was wolfgangsvault and the banner on the top was "you have won the hourly prize...." don't know what company. This makes 36 viruses in 2 days... I had about 20 last week. Ugh! Very easy to fix, but annoying all the same as it opens the media player each time.

edit... just had ANOTHER one, red lobster gift cert. at top (survey) and sara lee at the bottom. Could something else be causing all of these alerts to be caught by virus scan and opening the WMP?

TLCDad replied: I will take care of the WMP opening up (they are doing that to get around pop-up blockers which I have a bad feeling is going to get worse on all sites) but none should be viruses. I think you might have something else on your computer, especially if your getting 20 something a day. Or your scanner is doing false positives.

TLCDad replied: Ok all the wmp player popups should be gone. Let me know if anymore show up.

Odd they only show up on one computer here. But it has not had a windows update lately. You might want to do a Windows update, Microsoft might of fixed "this flaw/exploit" in the latest version of IE. I highly recommend checking windows update often since as you all are aware there has been alot of exploits lately (used by hackers).

TLCDad replied: Also, there are spyware programs (that get installed sometimes without you knowing when you install a free application you downloaded), that will watch your surfing habits and waits for you to visit a website that has keywords or something that will trigger it to give you a pop up or something. And since parenting club has alot of keywords that can often trigger these, you might be mistaken it for one of the banners. I highly recommend running Adaware by lavasoft (link in this thread) it will detect this hidden spyware programs and eliminate them. Very handy program. Even I get them often.

Basicly if you download a cool program and it is free, odds are it has some sort of spyware built in. Grrr.

coasterqueen replied: Thanks TLCDad. I've downloaded that program and running it now. I've had a bazillion pop-ups the last two days and I can't figure out where they are coming from. Hopefully this will help.

amynicole21 replied: I downloaded it and had 118 files found. I hope this solves the problem! Thanks for suggesting the program

kimberley replied: thanks TLC Dad! found 539 files! my puter is a lot faster now!

alice&arik replied: These banners are supposed to be at the top of the page? Like ads? I have them constantly lately. They are in the blue section across from the parenting club forums title. The one that is the most annoying is this lady starts talking and it is for some college online thing. And it has a little bar on it to decide how fast to get your degree. Right now it has an ad for verizon wireless. I also get some food ones. I don't want to list all the ones I get, maybe they are supposed to be there? But whenever I look at a different topic or post something, it is different.

TLCDad replied:
Yes those are normal and supposed to be there. They are ok and if one interests you please feel free to click on them and visit their site... they help with the costs of running Parenting Club's website and forums. The ones that bother people and that I block (even though their payout is better) are popups (ones that popup a new window on their own) You should not get those here. If you do please let me know, but most of the time this is a sign of spyware that has been installed on your computer which the Adaware program posted in this thread will get rid of.

kit_kats_mom replied: I run ad aware at least once a month. It generally finds about 30 files per month. Good stuff!

A&A'smommy replied: the ad ware thing everyone really needs to do that it will really help with pop ups! my dh does that to our computers!

alice&arik replied:
I have that program and do it every few days. I was just wondering if those were the banners TLCDad had mentioned.

TLCDad replied:
You might of missed my other post to you since it was at the end of the first page of this thread.

Yeah, the top and bottom banners are normal. What I block is the popups and if you still see popups, then notify me, but most likely they will be due to spyware on your computer but adaware will get rid of em. Sometimes popups get past my provider and I just need to go block the advertiser...very rare now though. Also if you find a banner that is total unappropriate, please let me know and I will block it. Likewise, if you see one of interests by all means please feel free to click on it and visit the site. The banners help support the costs of running this site.

alice&arik replied: Adaware is what I have, it works pretty good. My computer was really slow for awhile and when I scanned it there was a lot on there, but I have been doing it every few days.

A&A'smommy replied:
I don't do it enough but I also run virus scans more now because I'm paranoid lol

amynicole21 replied: I had an ancestry.com ad take over the screen just a minute ago... the kind that has a button at the top that says "skip this ad" because you can't do anything when it's playing.

kimberley replied:
i had the same thing happen just now. i clicked on a post, then it said the page you requested is loading (with the ancestry.com ad displayed) then the window just closed on me i also got a pop up yesterday but closed it before i read it.

TLCDad replied: Hmm I am not getting any popups. Did it just randomly happen while browsing here or did you just come here from another website? Run adaware and make sure it does not catch anything running.

BTW just for heads up and unrelated, there is a trojan running wild on the net lately that can get installed on your computer without you knowing. Go to windows update and make sure all critical updates are performed.

amynicole21 replied:
Yep, I was just browsing this site. I'll run adaware just to be sure, though.

Thanks!

TLCDad replied:
Thanks Amy! Let me know if it catches anything (especially anything running)

If not, I'll be on the look out.

kimberley replied: i just ran ad aware and tried to do windows update but it keeps saying it failed. any advice? it was the cumulative security update for OE6. all other updates installed just fine.

TLCDad replied:
Hmm not sure. Was Outlook Express currently running when you tried the update? If so, close it and try again. I would think it would close it automatically before doing the update though.

amynicole21 replied:
It caught 36 data miners and cleaned them. I know that I have a Worm_Netsky.P virus that I am waiting for my MIS people to clean off. Maybe that is affecting it somehow

kimberley replied: OE was closed. i restarted then did the update again and it worked. thanks. i captured the ancestry.com page for you if you want me to email it to you. you can see the pc addy in the addy bar and the ad taking over the page. ad aware found 44 files of spyware for me.

TLCDad replied:
Yes please do email it to me. And more specifically if you can email me what banner was displaying at the top of the page and bottom, and if one of them is misbehaving and throwing a popup without the providers knowledge it will be dealt with.

TLCDad replied: The ancestry layer should stop showing up now, looks like it only effected certain browsers. Let me know if you see anymore or anything like that. This is definitely new and I have a feeling you will start seeing this on alot of websites.

kimberley replied: thanks TLC Dad! you are great i did get one other pop up but i wasn't sure if it came from this board or another one i frequent. it was for "americans for the arts". i only saw it once.

i village has had the "layer" ads for some time.... they are really annoying. good luck with the combat against ads.

TLCDad replied:
You welcome and thank you for helping me catch this one. For some reason it has not shown up on my main computer... only on me older laptop.

Yeah they have a nice payout (even better than popups) though which is probably why alot of websites allow em. I just do not want to annoy anyone so I will block them as soon as I catch them.