Posted on 09/13/2009 3:40:02 PM PDT by jimbo123
Here’s a front page story the New York Times (NYT) would rather not be running: The paper is warning readers to be aware of bogus ads running on its Web site.
The paper says “some readers” have seen unauthorized pop-up ads promoting antivirus software on NYTimes.com, and warns visitors who see the ad not to click on it but to restart their browsers instead. While the Times doesn’t spell this out, it has likely had its site hijacked by a “malware” scammer who is trying to trick visitors into installing pernicious software onto their hard drives.
(Excerpt) Read more at mediamemo.allthingsd.com ...
Dang that is funny...and I thought it was just Drudge that allowed that crap.
“The paper is warning of bogus ads running on it’s wib site...”
The paper should be warning of bogus NEWS running on it’s web site, heheheh.
This must be the same one that has been popping up all over. It amazes me that there is no way to nail down who is doing this stuff and at least slap the bejabbers out of them.
NYTimes.com? Not much traffic there...
ping!
I got it at work earlier this year. Never clicked on it but it got onto my machine. IT had to wipe my disk to get rid of it. I have seen it two times in the last month on my Vista machine but quickly close my browser and so far it doesn't seem to be into my system.
Interesting. Avast was on the ball and not just being humorous about the NYT being a Trojan virus.
I have repeatedly gotten this message from Boston.com running Firefox. I'm doing an experiment to see if I can solve this problem using the Opera browser. I'm upset as it is because I thought this type of crap wasn't supposed to happen with Firefox.
It’s not just the NY Times.
My wife encountered it today and she has never visited the NY Times website.
I knew it was a scam when it listed the drives on my computer which were infected. It listed my D:/ drive - which is my CD rom - there are no disks in the drive.
This is the same stuff many porn sites have. Well, is NY Times that much different from a porn site?
I think I came across the same ad while viewing a Townhall cartoon. I knew it was bogus right from the start because I have a Linux laptop and it was warning me about problems with my Windows OS. It was up for about a day before it was gone.
My husband got it and had to spend hours with my son and also had to wipe his hard drive. A friend also got it and what she was told is that if you click on the x to close it it downloads the trojan, or malware or whatever it is. They said close it at the taskbar by right clicking and closing that way. I had it pop up the other day and I just shut down and rebooted. I didn’t pick it up. It just really ticks me off that people do this stuff.
My husband and I both use Firefox and he got it (I didn’t, but I had the popup come up, I just knew not to try to close it).
Yes, the big trick is not to close the pop-up. Either choice will lead to a bad outcome. I usually stop firefox.exe and restart it. The restore option allows me to NOT load pages that I don’t want to load.
I wish I could understand why I only get it from Boston.com and can’t prevent it from happening in the future. I guess I should stay away from the NYT. I did a google search and didn’t get a satisfactory answer as to why these pop ups occur with only certain sites.
It’s all pretty much beyond me. If I didn’t have sons who knew about this stuff I would be totally lost!
I read on Slashdot that the success of the spyware depends on a 9 YEAR OLD bug in Firefox that has never been fixed. The bug allows a “modal” pop up box, which means that it prevents all other actions until it has been attended to.
For various technical-related reasons, I only view commercial news sites through Opera now. There are too many compatibility bugs that have prevented Firefox from making accurate (and bug-free) displays. The reason I use Opera is that I absolutely DON’T want to use Internet Explorer at all because of the bugs, known and unknown, which plague this browser. If I continue to get problems, I may end up trying Safari or Chrome.
It’s amazing how many problems arise when I’m just trying to do simple, every day tasks!
It seems to ahve been MUCH worse lately. And you’re right, you can’t do anything with the pop up up. I hate to have to use a different browser....
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