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Why is THAT ad on a car forum?

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by jerrymildred, Sep 24, 2019.

  1. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    Idea for a new FHOP show & tell. Have you noticed that we get advertisements here that make you wonder if the vendor gets any hits at all from us? I noticed this one just now and it made me wonder how many pulmonologists are involved with PriusChat.
    Screen Shot 2019-09-24 at 7.44.25 AM.png
     
  2. Leadfoot J. McCoalroller

    Leadfoot J. McCoalroller Senior Member

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    I don’t think I’ve been served that one, clearly the adbots have realized that I switched to a dermatology practice.
     
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  3. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    Have you been looking for a good pulmonologist lately? I would think most of ads you see on on-line are targeted ads generated by your browsing and/or searching histories.
     
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  4. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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    [​IMG]

    This was on mine this morning.
    Fairly generic.....
     
  5. Rmay635703

    Rmay635703 Senior Member

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    B8872097-D728-4FF1-8DD1-F382E847B265.png


    Hmm, not sure if that’s the case, seems like a pretty specific market there.
     
  6. Leadfoot J. McCoalroller

    Leadfoot J. McCoalroller Senior Member

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    I’m always entertained by what triggers a given ad selection/placement. It could be the contents of the page itself, your recent browsing & search activity (at least from that same browser) and there are plenty more data streams to mine too...
     
  7. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    #7 Salamander_King, Sep 24, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2019
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  8. sam spade 2

    sam spade 2 Senior Member

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    They don't care.
    It's the "shotgun" method.
    Just random chance will mean that the shots hit a few appropriate targets.

    I wouldn't be without an ad blocker.

    Do you realize that those are "pass through" messages ?
    That is, this site gives permission to another SITE to pump in ads.......without any screening at all.
    What that means is: Those "foreign" sites can send links to all kinds of nasty things that they want.

    The question you asked is kind of evidence of that.
     
  9. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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  10. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    Now that's funny right there. And more than a little sick. LOL!

    No, but the word may have come up in conversation in the past few weeks.

    As for ad blockers, I enable them on PC so I can see the links to Amazon that often get posted. Rest of the web, I shut them off.
     
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  11. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Back in the 'old days', before most of y'all were members here, this is exactly how several incidents of malware were served up to numerous PC members.

    Those episodes turned my then-cursedly-slow DSL connection, with a low monthly data limit, into a blessing. To make my connection usable -- for web surfing in general, not specific to this forum -- I had previously blocked all the ads and scripts and third-party page content that otherwise severely slowed down page loading and wasted huge amounts of the data allowance. Those blocks kept all the ad-served malware out.
     
    #11 fuzzy1, Sep 24, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2019
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  12. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    ka block! but now i feel like i'm missing out :unsure:
     
  13. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    This site motivated me to install an ad blocker: for a while there it was completely hamstrung if I didn't use an ad blocker, wouldn't even load.
     
  14. sam spade 2

    sam spade 2 Senior Member

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    I use AdBlockerPlus and haven't noticed it causing a problem with links posted in the body of a post.
     
  15. Leadfoot J. McCoalroller

    Leadfoot J. McCoalroller Senior Member

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    I’ve enjoyed adblockers since WebFree in 1997. But lately I’ve been messing with a different browser and have only tried it raw so far.
     
  16. Montgomery

    Montgomery Senior Member

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    Waiting to see a "Coffee enema Equipment" ad........................
     
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  17. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    About 6-8 weeks ago I was pestered by bogus, pop-up offers:
    • PDF reader
    • infected MacOS scanner
    • e.t.c.
    These are just virus delivery software and the pop-ups were immune to my ad blocker. So I took a different approach.

    The HTML of the pop-ups can be examined using "show source" and identify the domain name of the thieving servers. I then add them to my "/etc/hosts" file, both IPV4 and IPV6 to give:

    Code:
    127.0.0.1 usine.puopla.site
    ::1 usine.puopla.site
    127.0.0.1 update4now.yourspaceofpage.info
    ::1 update4now.yourspaceofpage.info
    127.0.0.1 www.pdfmac.com
    ::1 www.pdfmac.com
    127.0.0.1 maketypeflare-rawclicks.icu
    ::1 maketypeflare-rawclicks.icu
    127.0.0.1 check4free.getbestvideo.info
    ::1 check4free.getbestvideo.info
    127.0.0.1 myvoxnews.com
    ::1 myvoxnews.com
    127.0.0.1 0fficial.page
    ::1 0fficial.page
    127.0.0.1 www.onesafe-software.com
    ::1 www.onesafe-software.com
    127.0.0.1 cdnjs.cloudflare.com
    ::1 cdnjs.cloudflare.com
    127.0.0.1 performprogressiveuberfile.icu
    ::1 performprogressiveuberfile.icu
    127.0.0.1 set4update4u.mainworldofcontents.info
    ::1 set4update4u.mainworldofcontents.info
    
    The "127.0.0.1" and "::1" are network bit buckets for IPV4 and IPV6. Once added, I could either refresh the page and/or hit the download button only to see them fail. All of the pop-up traffic going to a network dead-end. But I did run into one problem.

    The last pop-up had:
    Code:
    #127.0.0.1 ajax.googleapis.com
    #::1 ajax.googleapis.com
    
    This was a link to a google Java object. It cause two, previously useful web pages, autoline.tv and fueleconomy.gov, to suffer problems. In effect, Google had probably delivered the rogue pop-up. Regardless, commenting them returned normal operation and I've not had another rogue pop-up.

    Bob Wilson
     
    #17 bwilson4web, Sep 25, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2019
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  18. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    I think it depends on the ad blocker. I've seen lots and lots of comments on PC about people not being able to see links to stuff on Amazon or Ebay. When they turn off the ad blocker, they can see the links. My guess is that different blockers use different detection methods. What I have (built in to my browser) is effective enough that that big banner ad at the top of each PC page is empty. And I see other ads only on rare occasion.

    But, @bwilson4web's comment above brings to mind something I saw here 2 or 3 times last week. I clicked a link in a thread here that should have taken me to another thread here and it instead opened a page warning me that my Mac was infected and I had to click on that page within two minutes or it would become permanent. Worst of all, it claimed to be from Apple. It also disabled the back arrow on the browser. So I'd close the tab, find the post again and click the same link again. And it went where it was supposed to go, so it wasn't a bogus link. I grabbed a screen shot one time. See below. It hasn't happened in almost a week, so whatever was infecting the PriusChat servers looks seems to be cleaned up, but that thing looks really dangerous.


    Screen Shot 2019-09-19 at 7.46.22 AM.png
     
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  19. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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    I don't use ad blockers for the same reason that I don't block trolls in this forum.
    As long as they're not cluttering up the browser, I'm out of rats to give about what's flashing in the bar at the top of the page.

    Today's ad:
    [​IMG]
     
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  20. 3PriusMike

    3PriusMike Prius owner since 2000, Tesla M3 2018

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    The ad guys aren't totally dumb. To run a good ad campaign you have to run the same ads against a control group every so often to verify that your real targeted group is in fact worth paying extra to reach.

    Mike