We occasionally get reports of ads that trigger antivirus warnings or infect computers that are browsing the wiki. This FAQ is an attempt to consolidate all the information about such things into one thread. Please read the below before reporting any incidents.
This thread may also be used to report ads that violate our policies in other ways, such as being too "adult" or NSFW, automatically playing audio/video, etc.
REPORTING: try to get a screenshot of the console as well as this will help identify where it's coming from.
REDIRECTS: Its very tricky to get the first URL of a redirect trigger because they are designed to hide where it came from. So you need a redirect plug-in
active while the redirect happens so you can find the first URL, not the last. Where you were directed to doesn't help track down the source.
- TV Tropes, as a site, does not contain malware. We are a text-and-image wiki; viruses and malware cannot be uploaded to or embedded in the articles. As always, however, beware of any external link that you don't recognize, since we cannot automatically screen edits or posts for malicious links.
- 99.99% of the time, any suspected malware will be related to the wiki advertising.
- TV Tropes does not directly control the ads that are displayed. We use third-party ad providers and we determine things like the size and placement.
- We instruct our providers not to serve ads that redirect your browser, take control of the screen from you, forcibly scroll your screen, play audio without being clicked on, install malware, "pop up" or "pop over" your screen, or in any other way interfere with your browsing experience.
- We have custom software designed to detect ads that do these things and automatically block them.
- Malicious entities are constantly trying to sneak ads through the providers' networks in violation of these instructions. As providers have little incentive to proactively detect and block them, it's up to websites to report these sorts of problems.
- We rely on our users to report ads that get through these measures.
- Just because you see a particular ad doesn't mean everyone else sees it. Ads are customized by the ad providers to your location (by IP address), the content of the page you're viewing, and your browsing profile, which is tracking data accumulated by third parties over the course of all your internet browsing.
- Just because you get a malware warning or infection that seems related to an ad on TV Tropes does not necessarily mean that it is caused by one of our ads. Pre-existing malware on your computer can intercept ads and replace them with malicious ones.
- Ads containing malware, obviously.
- Misbehaving ads, such as ones that load a pop-up or pop-under, redirect your browser to another page, hijack your screen or automatically scroll it.
- "Adult" or NSFW ads. Scantily clad women alone may or may not qualify, depending on context, but we want this site to be work-safe.
- Ads that automatically play audio — that is, the audio starts without you clicking on the ad first. Video ads are acceptable.
- Note: Political content is not grounds for rejecting an ad. However, an ad that contains or implies hate speech, disinformation, or outright falsehoods may be objectionable enough to be blocked.
- First and foremost, maintain current, updated antivirus software, and keep your operating system and browser up to date with all patches offered by the software vendors. This includes Adobe Flash, Java, and other rich media plug-ins. Turn on your software's automatic updates if they are not already on and act immediately when prompted to install them.
- Never click on pop-ups purporting to have detected a virus, offering to "tune up" your PC, or otherwise inducing you to click on a link that you were not expecting. Any genuine message of this nature would come from your antivirus software and not from a web page.
- Be careful clicking on external links. These are identified with a small icon next to them. Example: Google. TV Tropes does not endorse or control the content of external links and you open them at your own risk.
- Never respond to any email or web page that asks for personal or financial information, including passwords, unless you have verified its identity. No reputable company will ever ask you for your password(s), other than to log in.
- You may choose to opt out of having tracking information collected by ad providers. This does not stop malware but helps you maintain your online privacy. See here for additional information.
- TV Tropes requests that you do not use ad blocking software while visiting us, as this site depends on advertising revenue to operate. If you do run an ad blocker, please add tvtropes.org to its exception list, or consider donating to the site to have certain ads removed.
- We (or the ad provider) place a "Report advertisement" link next to most advertising frames. Clicking on this will generate an automatic report and is the best way to do so. If you cannot click on this link or do not see it, continue for more advice.
- Try to identify the source URL of the suspect ad (see below). You can also use the target URL (if you are redirected), but note that this may be intentionally obfuscated by the ad provider to hide the source.
- Identify the ad provider. Some ads have a small area that links to the ad provider's page (like Google or AOL). In other cases, you can tell from the referral URL or you can look it up in a search.
- Go to the ad provider's contact/abuse page and fill out their form. Below are some links to common providers' abuse pages:
- Scan your computer for viruses. If your antivirus software will not operate (many malicious programs attempt to disable your antivirus software), you can download a scanning tool on a known clean system and run it on your infected machine from a read-only CD-R or flash drive.
- If you suspect that you've been tricked into divulging personal information to a phishing attempt or other fraud, change your passwords to affected sites immediately and contact your bank, credit card companies, and the credit bureaus to request a fraud alert.
- Please note that TV Tropes cannot assist you with the specifics of maintaining your computer. That's your responsibility. You may request general help in the appropriate forums, but please don't post new threads in the forums dedicated to wiki operation (Wiki Talk, Frequently Asked Questions, etc.).
- Sometimes, the wiki administration can get better results from the ad providers in dealing with malicious ads. If you can identify a malicious ad by referral URL, you can post the link in this thread, but please omit the "http" component so it doesn't create a hyperlink that someone might click on inadvertently.
- For image ads, right-clicking (or a long tap on mobile devices) should give you the option to view and copy the URL that clicking on it will send you to.
- For Flash, Java, or HTML 5.0 ads, it may be difficult to identify the source or the URL by right-clicking. In these cases, you need to view the page source to identify the ad so we can report it.
- In Internet Explorer, you can right-click in a blank or text area of any web page, and choose View Source from the context menu. Firefox also has this option. In Chrome, you can use the Inspect Element menu option, which interactively highlights the portion of the page whose code you are hovering over. You can use this to identify the ad frame and its source URL.
- For embedded ads, there will be a "frame" element with a "src" parameter. Drill down until you get to the lowest level. All we need to identify the ad is the "src" URL from that frame.
for more information or to discuss the service.
Edited by kory on Nov 15th 2023 at 10:36:27 AM
Seems like it's the same thing that's happened to a few other users as mentioned on the last page.
It seems to have lessened now. Maybe.
Some Gal
Still getting that http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/google_top_exp.js:7 thing mentioned earlier almost every page.
...And it's been freezing my browser a lot of the time.
edited 8th Oct '13 8:00:44 PM by CapedLuigisYoshi
a.k.a. Cly, that one girl who doesn't post here much anymore Something something YI = SMW 2 = SMB 5.
Tief girl with eartude
I'm still getting the error.
Interestingly enough, I seem to consistently get it every single time I load or leave a page from this thread (it just happens every so often on the rest of the site).
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer
The Final ECW Champion
All my efforts to deal with the script have failed, beyond restarting the computer and typing as much as I can before it acts up again. Maybe we should target the source?
edited 9th Oct '13 10:56:48 AM by Cider
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
It has been reported to Google.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
The Final ECW Champion
Fire Fox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 9 seem to work better than all the new gimmicky browsers. Still getting a lot of slow down but they are no longer crashing the computer.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
Lost in Space
I get Flash crashing my Chrome browser all the time, but it doesn't correlate to browsing TV Tropes only.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
The Final ECW Champion
The only place I had seen it before was youtube (also google owned, go figure) but it never crashed the browser before, it just meant I had to reload the video and watch the dumb ads again. (and people said the internet would kill TV? There will still be crowds huddle around T Vs because at least then the commercials will only delay further parts of the Ramayana, not force you to restart it)
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
Yeah, I'm using Chrome and I'm crashing after viewing about three pages or so. If I'm lucky, it'll ask me if I want to stop the script, but most of the time I have to give it the three fingered salute.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
The Final ECW Champion
Well, if Google's browser is having issues too I guess we have to invoke Occam's Razor.
Then again, maybe we do not have to. I vote we change google's page image to Bahomet and tell it was done for Halloween if they ask why.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
Tief girl with eartude
Did Google pull the tag off your dog's candy or something, Cider?
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer
What sort of error report is this getting? It's getting something called AppHangB1 only on Firefox for me, and Google is extremely vague as to what it entails.
edited 9th Oct '13 3:10:49 PM by SeptimusHeap
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The Final ECW Champion
I have this problem as well, as stated in this thread. Sorry for starting a redundant thread, but at the time I wasn't aware that it was an 'advertising' or 'computer security' issue (or known at all) and thus did not check this thread (you tend to read only as many threads as you absolutely have to when doing so causes your browser to blow up in your face :P).
One shouts at the whale. One pummels the whale around about its flukes and blowhole, yet the whale proceeds at the speed which best pleases the undaunted whale.
From Hell's heart I stab at thee.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
The Final ECW Champion
For what it is worth, I have seen it crop up on other websites now. Interestingly youtube, where I usually get script issues, was not one of them. It is running pretty smoothly.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
Tief girl with eartude
It doesn't seem to be happening as often any more, but it still is.
Also, I've noticed that occasionally it cites a slightly different script to the one I mentioned before;
Script: http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/google_top_exp.js:1
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer
You haven't by any chance heard anything from Google about the bad script, have you? I'm still getting it at least as frequently as I had been when it first cropped up (10%-20% of the time, maybe, though it usually shows up in clumps), and it's taken to crashing Firefox entirely at least half the time it does show up.
While browsing the wiki and trying to back out, I could not do so. I found out that the back history was filled with a page with a url with "rubicon" in it (I do not remember fully what happened).
The page was Urban Fantasy, if that is important at all.
edited 11th Oct '13 9:24:04 PM by MikuruFan
rubicon is the name of one of the ad systems we get.
And as for crashing, what error messages are folks getting? For me it's always, as said before, being AppHangB1, and it's pretty much shut down Firefox for me.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The problem is still extant, so I'm going to be trying a workaround. If it is successful, I may remember to come back and report.
In the meantime, has anyone contacted Google about this? If it's not TV Tropes code causing the problem, then it's something on Google's end that they need to be aware of. I haven't seen it happen on any other sites, does anyone happen to have an example site where the bug is known to occur?
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Hi
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
AFAIK, Eddie's contacted Google but they haven't responded yet.
Always 3:00am in the Filth
Well, if I understood his last post, "contact Google" means "chase it in a ship, intending to harpoon it". ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
I've been having the same problem as well. For some reason my mornings tend to be free from the crash, giving me hope that Google fixed it, then around noon it starts up again. Not sure why, I don't know if Google "schedules" their ads around viewer traffic or something.
I've had no problems so far this morning.
Edit: until I try to post this, then the crashes start.
edited 13th Oct '13 10:59:26 AM by Rotpar
"But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you." - O'Brien, 1984
I'm seeing the crashes on Firefox 24, but not on Safari 6.0.5. Haven't tested it on Chrome.
My browser keeps crashing every time I visit the site. Not really sure if the problem is on my end or its the site. I'm using firefox.