Last night I posted on here using a word which is offensive.  I got a warning for it and the post was deleted which is fair enough and I would like to apologise for using it.

The context was that yesterday at work I was trying to sell a bike.  I work for a charity which reconditions bikes which are recovered from household waste sites and we work with prisoners and other socially challenged groups to give them skills and something useful to do.

The bike I was trying to sell is for us a big ticket bike.  The customer was a young lad – maybe 16, and his mum.  The sale was going well, then I remembered STW had reviewed it in one of their mags and given it a glowing report.  I go to the shop computer, log in to STW and find the back issue.  Only it’s not been uploaded to the new site yet.  Great.  So I start describing the review.  Then the screen changed.  STW had logged me out and redirected me to a porn site.  Female flesh every where.  The lad looked mortified, the mother furious.  They left.  Now the winter has been hard for us, it’s been very snowy and cold so bike sales have been poor.  We haven’t been paid for March yet.  I’m OK but some of our staff are struggling to pay the rent, long term we are fine, but at the moment it’s hard.  The sale on this bike would have represented 3 good days of sales to us.  We lost the sale because STW can’t control what appears on the screen when paid up users go to their site.

Last night I was angry and used a word I shouldn’t and I remain apologetic and embarrassed for using it but God I was provoked.

Apparently porn redirects are ok though,  Was the swear word worse than the porn?

So very sorry to hear that such an extreme redirect happened borielbus, I will raise this issue again with the Tech guys.

It’s also ok to swear in the magazine articles linked to from the forum.

how can something that appears to be happening all the time be classed as “extreme”

wouldnt “common place” be a better descriptor?

can we get a pop-up top trumps going? most i’ve had is a big 18 block, anymore advances on this?

im seeing 25 on previous posts.  maybe a prize if you get 50, new samsung maybe.

25 is my record.

I’m not sure if this is relevant, but I rooted my Android phone (S4 mini) and flashed it with a custom ROM (CM11 in this case) a few years ago. I’m happy with things that just ‘work’ so phone and ROM have not been updated for maybe 3 years. I don’t get any popups or redirects at all when browsing STW on my phone (Lightning browser). I’ve tried to recreate the issues that people have reported but I can’t get any crap to appear.

Anyway, I guess this points to stock Android software allowing the ad problems to happen rather than actual devices…

That is truly horrible @boriselbrus and as far as we can see you are doing exactly what is needed 🙁 .  I think if that ever happened to me I would stay well away from that site forever more.  Then getting a warning isn’t exactly sympathetic either

Looking at the Alexa ratings doesn’t make it look as though things are going well either – pageviews down 15% since 3 months ago.  Admittedly that is only for people with the Alexa toolbar installed but it isn’t happening on other bike sites so it is difficult to believe it is not related

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/singletrackworld.com

I’ve never seen dodgy ads when logged out but when logged out I see very few ads anyway (not in UK).

In your case it is even more confusing as we’ve been led to believe that the dodgy ads are the bottom of the barrel once you’ve been served all the high paying ads.  You had only just been logged out so you shouldn’t have been served any ads before then and hence should start with the higher paying ones.  Something isn’t quite right but I imagine STW towers are very aware of that if unable to fix it

At least the popup blocker is catching some of it now… Plenty of it still gets through 🙁

Then getting a warning isn’t exactly sympathetic either

We had no idea what happened when he was given the warning other than he was unhappy with the pop ups. He himself has acknowledged the language he used was unjust and has kindly explained why he used it.

Fair enough – I thought he had written a post similar to the one above

No despite what Captain claims we were not aware at all.

I was referring to an earlier porn redirect.

Presume this issue is related to this well known issue with wordpress site vulnerability

https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-detect-and-clean-WordPress-Malware-Redirect

I was referring to an earlier porn redirect.

Ah! Pure coincidence then that you happened to mention porn being exposed in public then.

Ah! Pure coincidence then that you happened to mention porn being exposed in public then.

If the porn redirects only happen when browsing STW, then the word you’re looking for is correlation, rather than coincidence. 😉

Yes to clarify, my original deleted post didn’t explain at all what had happened, the warning was entirely fair and I remain very apologetic for the language I used.

If the porn redirects only happen when browsing STW, then the word you’re looking for is correlation, rather than coincidence. 

Quite. Also, when I posted  I was unaware of the situation Boris experienced

Still, probably just a coincidence. I’m sure no one else can replicate it. Must be happening on loads of other sites.

Who was the other member Captain that had it exposed publicly as I can’t recall that at all, I know there has been a few say they have had this happen but not anyone else claiming it was exposed to a member of the public. When I seen your post last night absolutely no idea what you were on about.

Can you provide a link to the post please?

The person was in a crowded place – airport lounge I think – browsing STW and a redirect to a port site with sound activated…so people around him heard some noises.

Pretty sure it was posted on this thread several pages back…

The person was in a crowded place – airport lounge I think – browsing STW and a redirect to a port site with sound activated…so people around him heard some noises.

Pretty sure it was posted on this thread several pages back…

No help, but thats my memory too..

Try using the search function..

Try using the search function.

😁

Nope, not this pop-up issue thread…

I tried browsing the site on my mobile yesterday, I gave up, without ABP it was completely unusable. Ads drive revenue only if they don’t drive users away.

Drac,

Try using the search function..

😀

Don’t want to jinx anything, but last and today have been pop up and redirect free on Android for me. Thanks.

Another pop up yesterday – on Android.

All this “we’re doing our best” bullshit is just pathetic. I challenge anyone to name any site anywhere else on the internet that is half as bad as this one in this respect.

(Except perhaps for porn sites, but even then the ads are probably relevant to the users)

This is getting a tad frustrating.

You’ve got some malicious code running in one of your adverts that seems to target android users with Chrome.

I’ve checked my device health, it’s specific to this site.

All getting a bit sad now, I like coming here but am avoiding it more and more…

FFS – nobody cares. They’ve been happening for years.

Random annoying pop-ups are an accepted side-effect of the funding model for Singletrack Magazine. They’ve been happening for years

Hasnt been happening to me for years just the last month or so.

If they have been happening for years I’ve never noticed them. The site is now unusable for me on my Android phone, that isn’t an exaggeration to get the point across, I literally can’t access any topic without almost immediately getting re-directed.

Doesn’t happen with any other site I visit, and no problems accessing this one via a PC.

The mods may not care, but this is completely counter-productive. Fair enough you need the ad revenue, you also need a site that isn’t completely inaccessible.

The mods may not care

Whether we care or not is an irrelevance, there’s nothing we can do about it.  We don’t run the site or have access to anything to do with advertising.

Would this have anything to do with Firefox using 117% of the memory to load the page here?

Then causing the system to run at 80-90% causing the fan to run constantly at full chat.

This is on a Macbook Pro with 8gb ram, 256gb SSD and over 80% of that free that NEVER runs the fan using Chrome.

Stopping the page sees it dropping right back down to next to nothing.

As does removing the duplicated support us/follow us banners at the bottom of the page.

Redirects for me too, this time it even says “Congratulations” whilst trying to convince me I’ve won something

I wouldn’t suggest the Mods don’t care. I think they care very much. I’m sure they’re completely pissed off about the situation too. However the funding model for the magazine is not something they have the ability to influence.

However the funding model for the magazine is not something they have the ability to influence.

That’s not strictly true – you would have thought that as trusted associates of the business that they can get a point across to the owners more effectively than we appear to.

I don’t suffer from pop-ups by the way, but it seems to be extraordinarily rife recently judging by this thread and its many closed duplicates. Mark et al. can stick their fingers in their ears and should “la la la” all they like re: numbers of visitors, but the fact remains that the forum does not appear to be remotely as dynamic as it once was. From the position of someone who is in a different time zone to most of you, it’s quite stark that whilst I used to have to hunt on at least the second page to resume a conversation the morning after I’d gone to bed, I can now quite frequently find it halfway down the first page, not having been posted on for 8-9 hours. That never used to happen.