Rebellious Emoticons

[Ag&Au]

Originally Posted by masseyfarm

I was trying to answer another thread when it happened. I just closed the page and reopened AF from my favourites.

Dave

I see the problem. You misspelled favorites. You have to go to that mysterious web site cdn.airforums.com instead of www.airforums.com.


Your case is now closed. If you require further assistance go to:


www.thiswontwork.com use password thisWonteiTher (hold down shift key for first 3 and last 4 characters of password) Do not reveal this to anyone else or they will also be unable to access the site.


Glad to help,


Ken

[masseyfarm]

Thanks Ken! At least that site. ( www.thiswontwork.com ) did not give me any security warnings.

Dave

Originally Posted by Ag&Au

I see the problem. You misspelled favorites. You have to go to that mysterious web site cdn.airforums.com instead of www.airforums.com.


Your case is now closed. If you require further assistance go to:
www.thiswontwork.com


use password thisWonteiTher (hold down shift key for first 3 and last 4 characters of password) Do not reveal this to anyone else or they will also be unable to access the site.


Glad to help,


Ken

[masseyfarm]

2nd time today this happened.

I was not logged in this time, and was on Steve's Classic rebuild thread changing pages to an earlier post.

Screen shot attached below.

Do you think we have a problem Houston?????????????

Dave

[Ag&Au]

If you Google upgradient you will find many links from forums whose members are reporting being redirected to upgradient.com. Apparently both you and I have software installed that warns of of the redirect rather the just sending us there. I don't know what happens if you go there, and Im not to try and see. Apparently IE-11 has such a feature built in.

These posts in other forums lead me to believe that there is some kind of virus or other type of malware that is infecting forums software. Dave, you might find these posts interesting, because some make reference to adware.


Ken

[Ag&Au]

Originally Posted by Ag&Au

If you Google upgradient you will find many links from forums whose members are reporting being redirected to upgradient.com. Apparently both you and I have software installed that warns of of the redirect rather the just sending us there. I don't know what happens if you go there, and Im not to try and see. Apparently IE-11 has such a feature built in.

These posts in other forums lead me to believe that there is some kind of virus or other type of malware that is infecting forums software. Dave, you might find these posts interesting, because some make reference to adware.


Ken

When I think about it, I believe my problems started about the time I first encountered those in-thread ads. Coincidental, perhaps?


Ken

[Ag&Au]

there are some typos in my previous posts.
The proper Google search argument should be upgradienk which is what appeared in Dave's warning dialog.


I apologize for any confusion my typos may have caused. The general idea I am getting from browsing the Google results is that tech support at more than one forum believes that some commonly used adserver may have been hacked and is redirecting users to the upgradienk web site rather than whatever ad they are supposed to go to when they click on the ad. This upgradienk web site has only been up a few days, but is receiving a fair number of hits. It has less than 50% rating of the web security reporting sites I checked, which means it is highly suspect. I have seen no account of what happens when one goes there, but it seems likely to me that it will try to download some type of malware. It is possible that it could quickly download something and then pass the user on to where he expects to go thus making it appear normal. right now I am going to do a full security scan on my computer.


Ken

[masseyfarm]

I have just done that. A full clean and deep scan, and I have no issues to report.

What about these adds that activate when you accidentally pull your mouse across them? Most are some type of video. I don't like them but they are everywhere, even the newspapers.

Like everything else in this life, someone will always screw up a good thing! and usually over greed.

Dave

[Ag&Au]

Originally Posted by masseyfarm

I have just done that. A full clean and deep scan, and I have no issues to report.

What about these adds that activate when you accidentally pull your mouse across them? Most are some type of video. I don't like them but they are everywhere, even the newspapers.

Like everything else in this life, someone will always screw up a good thing! and usually over greed.

Dave

Boy that's a true statement.


One thing to keep in mind: If this is really a thing going on and as it appears, it is only a few days old, it is highly likely that the malware's fingerprints may not be in the Antivirus program's database yet. I have a quick scan scheduled every night, and am going to do a full scan every few days for a while.


Supposedly my antivirus protection checks every download to my computer and warns me if something's dangerous. That is if it knows about it yet.


There is another possibility. That would be that this is all harmless and this new web site may be benign, but is being flagged as dangerous by malware detection software, because it has low security rating because it is so new. I'm not betting on that though.


Ken

[Smartstream]

Like you guys my emoticons are acting up and posting pictures is acting very strange. I have not had the upgradienk screen come up but I haven't clicked on any adds. The strange thing is the reply to thread boxes now have black border lines around them instead of the normal blue lines. Also yesterday the portal screen would sometimes come up with black lettering in the thread titles and other times the normal blue lettering. This all started with the in thread adds. Very strange but I sure wish it would stop and get back to normal.

[Rich W]

I do not have any problems with posting, emoticons etc. using Firefox, but, if I click [More] to see the other icons, then click it again, it won't list additional icons until I choose an existing icon, which then opens the [More] icons window again and I can select one of those.

Using IE, sometimes I cannot select or drag any emoticons to the post. Other times I can drag them to the post but not click them.

After this last IE upgrade I have found that many sites have issues with it and I had to switch to Firefox. Some sites don't even recognize IE 11, they think it's a much older browser. The site for my son's university won't even let us log in using IE.

I don't see the black border around replies in either browser.
I'm not getting any warning pop-ups.
I am using the Enhanced Interface - Full WYSISYG

[Ag&Au]

Well the frustrating thing here is that things are not constant. Things being messed up is something I can adapt to as long as I can learn the new messed up rules. Everytime I open the reply box I seem to encounter a different set of messed up stuff. Right now I have the black borders. I can drag but not pop an emoticon. I can seem to do most other things, I would routinely do. However, if I hit enter at the end of a paragraph, I get no line space. If it hit enter twice, I get one line space on the edit screen when I post it it displays as two line spaces. If I want a single line space I must edit the post and delete the extra line spaces. I'm sure if I try again in a couple hours conditions will be different.

My couple hour long deep virus scan turned up nothing.

I use both IE 11 and chrome with essentially the same results. I used to get some of the warnings about IE 11 being an unsupported old browser, but haven't seen one in quite awhile. I think that gradually websites are being changed to recognize it.

I am wondering how wide spread this actually is. There seem to be only a few of us who notice it, but I wonder how many others don't realize anything is different or haven't stumbled upon this thread.. I think that it is very possible that this sequence is started by either intentionally or inadvertently clicking one of the ads, perhaps a particular one.

When I stripped my browser down and disabled all the add-ons , I ensured that adblock plus was completely removed from the computer. I experienced no improvement in the operations of anything here on Airforums except I saw all the ads. The fact that I get identical results on two different browsers on two different computers leads me to believe the problem is with this site. I also get normal behavior on other forums I check in on.

When I received the email referred to earlier in this thread from Social Knowledge, I sent a reply saying that they did not solve the problem. Last night I received an email saying that someone from tech support would visit Airforums and look into the reported problems

Ken

[Janet H]

These various issues are being looked into but for now, if you are odd looking pages, please try refreshing your screen a few times, it's a temp workaround...

[Ag&Au]

Originally Posted by Janet

These various issues are being looked into but for now, if you are odd looking pages, please try refreshing your screen a few times, it's a temp workaround...

Thanks for the update. I will try that.


Ken

[Ag&Au]

I haven't been posting much lately. I have found that I have an actual real life that has keep me somewhat busy. However, the editor seems to be behaving more consistently. I have discovered that dragging the emoticons does have some advantages over popping them. One being that I feel I have some control over where they end up. I have not experienced any freezes of the editor in the last few days. However, I can't get the globe with the link button to work The underline and bold seem to work. so the question is: Were any changes made or did this happen by digital divine intervention?


Ken