[Closed] Rogue adverts

So no swearing on the forum but OK that it redirects to a woman stuffing four fingers up herself.

I keep getting the "you have a virus" android warning pop up thing, no porn though still have to find that myself.

Phah.

Chuffing hilarious.

P or no P, totally irrelevant in the world of no swearing and yet porn redirects.

Should be ashamed.

I've reported it to the Mods, whilst I don't/haven't been infected or redirected I think it's too serious an issue to be ignored.

Tech might be at home watching C5 crap or in the Pub, but issues like this should be easy to sort out if you use the vast IT resource I mentioned in "that other thread"

How many more threads are needed before you either accept the sites being targeted and you put some resources behind it or just accept that users will be pissed off ?

😆 Seems nobody writes shite for windows any more.

And not wanting to cast aspertions or anything but as long as there are cougars, there is porn.

Interesting. I assumed it was only non-Ps that were affected. If it's P users too then that should make narrowing down the culprit much more likely.
(I assume you have ads disabled?)

not quite as good as monster facials or whatever, but when I open the "£%$"£$ Amazon thread I get ads for Amazon, nice one

Had that survey on Saturday...

I've said it before on the website update thread, but I'm pretty sure we are just numbers to get adverts served to raise more money for the site. The traffic to this is so great that ad serving is likely to be making a reasonable amount of money (for ad serving)...given the nature of these redirects and the lack of speed to rectify them, it suggests that there isn't really a desire to fix them and that the impact to the users isn't really that much of an issue.

Which is a shame as it does, once again, remind the community of users on here that this is just a business for them in charge (which kind of defeats the intention of it when it first started - yes, bills need paid as do wages, but selling out to cover those isn't great).

Dick - I believe from previous discussions about this you are right - the ads on the forum are the only part of singletrack that makes any money so we have to remember this - we provide the content for the ad based revenue that supports the whole operation. The magazine does not make enough to fund the people writing it

this is why we get so many ads in comparison to other forums - this one has to make money

From grit.cx

On ST there has been a 15% increase in traffic month on month since we activated the mobile theme with pretty much all of that coming from mobile users.

How much of that would be folk having to click on multiple links to get to the last post in a thread I wonder?

Change of strategy at STW Towers needed I think.

Can't think of any other 'big name' sites that suffer from this, it's normally low rent, click bait, ad revenue generating sites.

Perhaps put the reputation of the site, users, and the concerns of legitimate cycling advertisers above maximising ad revenue, and use a more reputable provider that vets the ads that are served.

FWIW, I have no problem with adverts. I do, however, have a problem with massively intrusive/page takeover adverts, with massive data drain adverts, with autoplay sound/video adverts and most of all, with wholly inappropriate/offensive adverts. If I can't say **** (assume that f e c k has been edited), how the **** are porn adverts allowed?

Cyclingnews, Bikerumor and others, lots of content, lots of adverts, never any of these problems.

How much of that would be folk having to click on multiple links to get to the last post in a thread I wonder?

I posed the same question a while ago. Very clever. Using the site on a mobile requires many, many clicks to get to something you [i]might [/i]want to read. Clever.

literally just had an ad for plusnet user something or other pop up on this very thread, what a load of balls

CFH - are those sites just covering costs tho or supporting a wider staff that run the magazine?

I think thats the issue here needing to maximise the advertising income

There is something that must not be named you can do to stop ads ( IIRC the ban on saying this was eased - I hope so)

Cyclingnews have a pretty big staff covering events globally, including live text coverage for example. Can't be cheap to run.

But this isn't ads, it's redirects - automatically taking the user from www.singletrack to www.pornsite

I am not against porn but I really don't expect to come to this site and have it take me somewhere else without my permission.

maximise the advertising income

That's just fine, but....

Can't think of any other 'big name' sites that suffer from this, it's normally low rent, click bait, ad revenue generating sites.

And...

I really don't expect to come to this site and have it take me somewhere else without my permission.

Spend some time on Pinkbike, NSMB, VitalMTB, Factory Jackson or others. Lots of content, none of the problem adverts.

By all means maximise advertising revenue, but just not with utter, utter shit in the way of advertising.

awww, man - was that survey [b]not[/b] someone's kid doing a uni project ?

Wish I'd not done it now, or given my email in case they wanted further critique of their grammar

Legitimate ads are OK. I've even clicked on and bought from them but I don't need them rimmed down throat. Unlike the young lady in the latest redirect, she apparently loves getting things rimmed down her throat.

Just had more porno redirects. Guys, please try and get it sorted, this just isn't on.

I'm beginning to feel a little left out here as I have had none of these things 🙁

We've reported it. The people who can fix it are probably in bed.

There seems to be some sentiment here that it's intentional. I can assure you it's not. AIUI ads get delivered via third party advertising networks, they're supposed to deliver ads according to criteria STW has agreed to but it'd seem that occasionally rogue ones break through. I don't know quite how this works, but there is no way that browser redirects, porn pop-ups and malware would be sanctioned; something has gone very wrong somewhere. (If I were a betting man I'd hazard that they're all from the same source.)

There seems to be some sentiment here that it's intentional

Might not be intentional, but the fact this has been known for a day and is still happening is pretty crap really.

I've got my adblocker on to stop them.

I'm not in bed. I've been working on it for the last few hours. Tom, was looking at it today. I've been on holiday until this evening. Let's see what happens for the next hour.

Can't sleep.

First thread:

[IMG] [/IMG]

Mind boggles.

I reported first rogue ad last Sunday, and the first redirect on Monday. A week later, it's still going on.

Forum index this time, didn't even get to click a thread.

[IMG] [/IMG]

tommathy - Key Master
… if I could get some more information on the issue such as where and when it happens plus a screenshot if possible.

Screenshots emailed to tech@

I have been getting this for over a week now. Will grab some screen shots next time.

The last one I got all but took over the phone, multiple popups and redirects, and the phone vibrating away like mad, turned into a race as I couldn't back out of the popups fast enough to be able to close the browser tab. 18 popups showing in the history.

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

Got another just now...went to cloudatt, then redirected to goboobs then redirected to instapic with an offer to see naked pics.

No screengrabs I'm afraid...unlike real sex, this happened too quickly.

I normally stay out of these threads but there's some worrying stuff happening.

I think Mark etc should maybe try and explain why

a) they think it's happening - surely the co's they use to deliver ads shoudl filter this stuff out?

b) why stw seems to prone to it -no other sites I go on seem to have reports as regularly as this and they're equally as busy).

c) what they're doing to mitigate - dropping some ad servers until they can trust them etc?

The answer to this problem is not '£1.50 and it goes away' - the issue is as much one of stw being a trusted brand this type of thing is damaging to stw as a brand, regardless of who's affected.

Maybe STW doesn't care about forum members as they're a bunch of whiney bawbags?

I think you're wrong on the former Jamie and the latter is a sweeping generalisation 🙂

My guess is they don't think they can identify who is serving the problem ads and they can't afford to switch off all ads and then selective re-enable them to find out who it is.

Has anyone thought about Tweeting some of this stuff? I thought that was the generally accepted way to get attention with CS issues these days.

Well you could if you like but I was up until 1 last night and Tom was working on it most of yesterday so it's not going to get more attention here. Right now I'm just pulling up at work. I have a theory as why it's happening and I'll fill you in shortly on what we've been doing and are about to do.

* Likes *

Turn off all adz and wait for the ozone layer to fix itself before turning them back on ??

Switch to a different ad provider? Clearly they're not all doing this, this isn't the first time this has happened is it. Do they have a particularly high ecpm or something?

I got caught out by this this morning, while sitting in an NHS waiting room with my daughter. Not cool.

.. take me somewhere else without my permission..

That's why safe words were invented

Wife looked over at just the wrong moment, had a lot of explaining to do. Glad this thread exists!

Good point - can we keep this thread going indefinitely?

Her: WHY T.F. ARE YOU LOOKING AT THAT????

Me: I'm not honey, I was just arguing about racist language on singletrack and it "redirected" me.

Her: ?

Me: No, really, it's a thing - look there's thread about it....

^ doesn't explain why you were abusing yourself at the same time though!

Wish I had this excuse the time my wife *DID* find porn on the iPad

🙁

Please keep reporting issues direct and/or on this thread.

Still redirected to cloudatt just now.