re: Rivett's iPad woes (OT?)

[Chip Chester]

re: Rivett's iPad woes (OT?)

Google up "skimlinks"... and know that it's possible for folks other than Milicron to insert things into traffic going to your devices. It's also possible to stop certain selected scripts from running, no matter where they come from. I'm not sure whether your iPad lets you access tools to do so, however.

Chip

 

[rivett608]

Thanks, I'll look into that.

I understand and agree with Milicron's closing of the earlier thread. It appears the problem is not caused by the PM as the title could lead one to believe.

I usually keep my iPad set on " private browsing" a feature of safari, this means I am not automatically logged on to sites such as the PM when I go to them. My guess is since this is something fairly new Apple will figure out a update soon. In the mean time maybe I'll stay logged on.

Also in addition to this, my cable has been acting up for a few weeks, they have been out here a bunch of times, rewired the whole block, etc. etc..... They'll be back Monday!

And last week when I updated my blue ray player in the shop, pandora no longer works.... It is a software problem and the maker is working on that too......

One might think this is all connected, it is not... These are all separate systems with different internet providers..... The systems do not connect to each other at all. In case you wonder why I have multiple internet lines.... I happen to live in one of google's first fiberhoods where each house can be wired for optical fiber at a too cheap not to have price.

 

[jlrii]

I meant to respond to that. Generally I do not log on when connecting from my iPhone as I will want to respond to a post but it takes what I consider too much time to do during work hours. Being a one task person (multi-tasking is BS and unproductive IMHO). But anyhow I see the same BS and traced it to the company that does it. They allow you an opt out but it doesn't kill their adverts, just their tracking. Add block didn't work, an IOS update is available which appeared in the past week but I have not had the time yet. The issue does not appear at home when logged in with Chrome. I am not sure if I want to log on with my phone because it could spread the issue to my account..maybe....i dunno. Frustrating though with all the highlighted text and also the "PAGE FLIP" thing so if you happen to pull up on the right sire of the screen it opens an add (usually verizon in my case) which is a PITA to close.

JR

 

[rivett608]

I can confirm this is a malware called kontera that has effected my iPad. All the instruction I have been reading as to how to kill it seem to apply to computers and I don't know how to accesses the pages where you need to remove things. I think I'll visit the apple store.

If I only knew what site I picked it up from so I would know where to stay away.......

 

[gregormarwick]

It's not your iPad, and it's not kontera, although it's the same thing as kontera.

It's a third party script that's injected on this site from a crappy advertising company called viglink.

It's right there in my blocked items list when I visit this page.

If you want to block 99% of the annoying stuff on the internet on your ipad go into the Settings>Safari>Advanced and disable javascript. Some sites may stop working properly, you'll have to try it and see if it negatively affects anything you use.

Edit: Should clarify, neither viglink nor kontera are malware. Just more soulless click harvesters posing as marketing firms.

 

[pistonskirt]

Thanks Atomkinder for suggestions in the previously locked topic.....not had time to follow up though things seem to have mysteriously improved since yesterday.

The hot links (all for cars from Ad choices) still appear but only when not logged in to PM, they no longer show when logged in & niether does my laptop re-load the PM page immediately after closing. Only thing that I did was a deep scan on both PC & laptop but Vipre found nothing.

Perhaps something is telling me that as support for XP has now ended I should be heading for Windows 7.....and a new PC......and a new laptop....arrggghhh

regards

Brian

 

[JoeBean]

If you are mostly connecting on your home network and have an old computer sitting around you might want to set up a pfsense firewall. Pfsense is free and runs on fairly old hardware and is pretty simple to set up as it uses a web interface much like your router. Install squid and squidguard and it can use the free shallalist to filter ads and whatever other content you want to block. Works great. As a couple of bonuses, it can make your wireless router less likely to crash as you can configure most as a access point and let the pfsense box route and assign IPs, and it also protects you from the nasty malware that's been infecting home routers lately.

 

[rivett608]

"Edit: Should clarify, neither viglink nor kontera are malware. Just more soulless click harvesters posing as marketing firms.".... He might be on to something here because once when the pop up was coming my address line froze for a second with "viglink" in it.

I am still getting these pop ups even after trying many ways to kill them, again only happening on PM and only when not logged on. I did read on the vBullietin help forum there were some issues with this....

Removing VIGlinks! - vBulletin Community Forum

My biggest concern is the poster above referred to "soulless click harvesters", what are these? Is this just some kind of tracking or are they stealing pass words and log in information?..... It's one thing to just have annoying crap pop up every time you go to look at something, it's another if they are getting into your stuff.

Thanks.

 

[Chip Chester]

Generally, "click harvesters" get paid by advertisers to deliver clicks to their ads. Sometimes they set a cookie on your browser to see if/when you come back, where else you've gone, etc. The soulless part comes in because they don't care about interdicting your communications with a third party to do what they do. Sometimes the third party is in cahoots, for a cut of the action. The latter case would have the software operational on the third party's actual server, rather than some middleman.

In the end, it's like caller ID used to be. You could envoke caller ID to determine who is calling you. Then the phone companies allowed you to turn off the ID. Then VOIP allowed you to spoof the ID. Then there were ANI products that fed everything thru an 800 number on the way to you so you always got the inbound number, no matter what the caller did. There are probably countermeasures for that now, too.

There are some really smart folks out there in computerland. Why they're spending their time and talents on this crap I'll never know... Money.

Chip