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
One problem I've been noticing is that having video ads (silent or noisy) at the bottom of the post-adding dialogue causes many of my keystrokes to not be registered. I don't know if that's just my browser, or lag from the video, but I assume it's probably both.
I really hope forum videos are just an experiment, they're bad enough on regular pages.
Out of curiosity, why is it necessary to add more ads? Is the site becoming increasingly expensive?
edited 18th Mar '14 10:17:46 AM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!
hey i dunno, why don't you tell me
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Well, we do keep creating more threads, making more posts, uploading new avatars, etc... :/
Lost in Space
The hosting costs come in three main parts: bandwidth, CPU time, and storage. While we obviously can't disclose the exact numbers, TV Tropes has a lot of viewers. It's enough that, despite being mainly text-based, we still eat up a very large amount of bandwidth. We're in the top 1,500 sites in the U.S. and the top 4,000 globally, according to the latest Alexa stats.
That means a fairly sizable server (in reality, more than one server) that has to be paid for in addition to the raw traffic costs.
We wouldn't survive for a month on donations. Merchandising and "premium" services like forum ad removal help but they are not nearly enough. So that leaves advertising as our primary revenue source.
edited 18th Mar '14 11:20:28 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Eddie, I'll let you just know you did ask for this, so...(I'm not that tech-minded enough to figure out what's important, but here's the entire dump from the flash player ads that keep autoplaying)
<object width="300" height="250" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://tag.ybrant.hiro.tv/SyndPlugins/flowplayer.unlimited-3.2.16_hiro.tv.swf" name="fp_68962315_api" id="fp_68962315_api"><param value="true" name="allowfullscreen"><param value="always" name="allowscriptaccess"><param value="high" name="quality"><param value="#000000" name="bgcolor"><param value="opaque" name="wmode"><param value="config={"key":null,"persistVolumeLevel":false,"logo":{"url":null,"fullscreenOnly":false,"linkUrl":"","displayTime":0,"zIndex":2},"clip":{"scaling":"fit","linkUrl":"","linkWindow":"_blank","provider":"streamingProvider","autoPlay":true},"plugins":{"streamingProvider":{"url":"http://tag.ybrant.hiro.tv/SyndPlugins/flowplayer.pseudostreaming-3.2.12.swf"},"content":{},"contentLogo":{},"controls":{"url":"http://tag.ybrant.hiro.tv/SyndPlugins/flowplayer.controls-3.2.15.swf","zIndex":2,"autoHide":{"enabled":false,"fullscreenOnly":false,"hideStyle":"none"},"stop":true,"play":true,"scrubber":true,"time":true,"mute":true,"volume":true,"fullscreen":true},"akamaiAnalytics":{},"hiro":{"playerId":"0_0","url":"http://tag.ybrant.hiro.tv/SyndPlugins/Flowplayer_Hiro.swf","tags":"","site_id":"New-US-TL-GL","parentURL":"http%3A%2F%2Ftvtropes.org%2Fpmwiki%2Fposts.php%3Fdiscussion","zIndex":2,"htmlWidth":300,"htmlHeight":250,"forceResponse":null,"flavor":"ybrant","useConstantMovieId":false,"allowPrerollsOnLoop":false,"pauseOnAdClick":true,"networkEventsPerc":1,"networkRequestEventsPerc":10,"userInitiated":null,"isMultiBurnPlacement":false,"site_user_id":"837688162378","sessionID":"2306698951012","Allow Reg Screen":false,"baseVolume":"0.000001","playerSizeConstraint":null,"volume":0.8,"companionCookieMethod":false,"defaultClientID":null,"browserName":"Firefox_27.0","publisherDomain":"tvtropes.org","appEngineDomain":"hiroservers.appspot.com","extDynamicParam1":"","extDynamicParam2":"","isSynchCacheLayer":true,"affiliateId":"160376","useFlashCookies":true,"serverName":"ybrant.hiro.tv","externalViewLogServlet":"ibsibs","blockBlacklistedDomains":false}},"canvas":{"background":"#000000"},"playlist":[{"customProperties":{"videoTitle":"","videoDescription":"","videoKeyWords":"","videoDurationSecs":""},"url":"http://besttv20.cdn.it.best-tv.com/FootballDavidBeckham-S.FLV","scaling":"fit","linkUrl":"","linkWindow":"_blank","provider":"streamingProvider","autoPlay":true}],"playerId":"fp_68962315"}" name="flashvars"></object>
edited 18th Mar '14 11:18:26 AM by tryrar
Beautiful. Thanks.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
We have some obnoxious auto-play video ads popping up at the bottoms of forum and post box pages.
I am seeing them in two flavours.
The first is a mucinex ad. I tried getting source info or IP off of the ad but either because the ad lacks that info for some reason or also the computer I am using has certain functionality disabled. This ad will autoplay even if you don't click on it or even if your not in that tab. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't auto play. It at least has mute and pause controls that are overt.
The other variant happens on at least one other ad. Some health supplement of some sort o Krill stuff. This one auto-plays but the pause/stop controls and volume control that appears at the bottom do nothing. If you mouse over the ad to reach the obvious controls you will easily miss the hidden controls which only blink in when you mouse over. Unless you hover the mouse over the ad for more then a split second you will miss the in ad controls easily. This tends to happen because people are most likely to go for the obvious ad controls which do not work. If you look closely you can see a rather very transparent control set in the top right hand corner of the ad. This ad however has another rather very annoying tendency. If you stop other ads it's audio will play over or through them on the same page. It seemed to clash with some ad going on about Edo, Japan and the mucinex ad. This one had an IP of 3.2.17856.17952.
These are the only video ads that seem to have these conflicts and rather annoying features.
edited 19th Mar '14 5:15:48 PM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
hey i dunno, why don't you tell me
Got a popup on my phone, but I only got part of a URL and "error - the last location provider was disabled." What I got of the URL (because my goddamn dumbass phone can neither get to the full URL nor take a screenshot) was this:
http://s0.2mdn.net/ads/richmedia/studio/pv2/29179...
i care but i'm restless, i'm here but i'm really gone, i'm wrong and i'm sorry, baby
I'm getting tremendous amounts of typing irresponsiveness from the video ads now. I have to press the keys dozens of times to compensate and still keep winding up with incomplete words. Does anyone else have this issue? I have it on some other sites with auto-playing ads, too. It seems to vary, though.
edited 20th Mar '14 10:04:59 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!
Hi
That happens to me when pages are first trying to load; after everything's up and running I don't have a problem.
It continues to happen as long as the ad is playing for me.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!
deep in though- ow!
I have an app from the Mozilla Foundation called Lightbeam that shows a veritable constellation of 3rd party sites attaching cookies when I visit tvtropes, around 70 different ones. The only other sites even in that ballpark are Cracked.com and doubleclick.net, both of which I kind of expect that from. It's not something that I expect from here, and since they're specifically tagged as rooted to tvtropes.com, I'm not sure this is an ad server issue. This is probably related to my inability to open more than a couple tabs of tvtropes without performance slowing badly and RAM usage spiking, or the blank popup tabs that seem to spawn at random intervals if I have a tvtropes tab open. This all carries over to other browsers and computers, too, and has been going on for a few weeks.
I rarely visit the forums to avoid the cynicism ooze.
The Tape Fairy
Don't these ads usually give yo an option to block them if you have adblock? I'm only asking because I have adblock and I've seen this on other sites. Usually if you mouse over Flash content it'll have a little white "block" button. These ads don't seem to have them.
It's a good thing our last name isn't Drew, because then you'd be Nancy Drew and I'd be Andrew Drew. -Andy Botwin
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Westrim: That sounds suspiciously like adware/malware. Have you tried giving your computer a thorough cleaning and check over? None of the ads on tropes should be attempting to open additional tabs much less swamping the performance like that. However I have seen malware/adware do that.
Who watches the watchmen?
Lightbar only shows ten third-party sites on my system. Nine of them are google (legits). The tenth is telapart (legit). Westrim, you should find out what is messing with your system. It isn't us.
edited 22nd Mar '14 10:33:35 AM by FastEddie
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
Basically canon
I just got a full-screen "Message from our sponsors" ad for Children's Medical Center on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic... URL was http://sponsor.adverstitial.com/view/advertisement?loc=35299&adv=2596013&camp=608468&w=300&h=250&rnd=8337993896973563563.
Edit: Pop-up, URL was http://cm.g.doubleclick.net/push?client=ca-pub-6897902191714833.
Edit 2: Pop-up... http://cm.g.doubleclick.net/push?client=ca-pub-6897902191714833
edited 23rd Mar '14 6:57:57 AM by Midna
pearlina brainrot affects millions of people worldwide. if you or a loved one are suffering from pearlina brainrot, call 1-800-GAY-NERDS
Right here on the bottom of this conversation, and at virtually every other page I've visited today all around the site, I'm getting some autoplay video longform soccer documentary. Every once in a while there's a half-second or so of audio from some seemingly unrelated commercial, but not enough to identify the possible source. There's a thing where I can "play on Youtube" but when I click it in order to find out what the video is the popup is blocked.
Can we get a user setting to turn on/off the "You might like" stuff, 'cause I don't. Not ever.
When I have a little time, I trope. If I have any left over, I work and sleep.
Lost in Space
No, that's advertising. It has to stay.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
hey i dunno, why don't you tell me
I'll take it over the video player any day of the week.
i care but i'm restless, i'm here but i'm really gone, i'm wrong and i'm sorry, baby
The Tape Fairy
I'm getting the soccer ad and its like Firefox poison. It keeps dragging down performance and causing the browser to stop responding every couple seconds. I know it's not a virus, because it only happens when I'm on tvtropes and one of those videos is playing. It got so bad that my only solution was to enable adblock for the site, which is something I didn't want to do at all.
Just for the record, I'm liking the Taboola ads, and I actually click on them once in a while.
edited 29th Mar '14 5:41:43 AM by originalhobbit
It's a good thing our last name isn't Drew, because then you'd be Nancy Drew and I'd be Andrew Drew. -Andy Botwin
I had the same problem with the video ads. They were slowing my computer down to the point where it was affecting performance of the Internet and everything else I was doing.
I found a solution for Google Chrome that doesn't involve turning Adblock on. (I'm not sure if there's a similar solution for other browsers.)
Go to chrome://settings/content. Under Plug-Ins, choose "Click to Play." Now videos will only play if you click on them.
This will prevent the video ads from autoloading. It also stops other Flash-based ads from loading, although from what I've seen 90% of TV Tropes ads are left in tact. If you want to view one of the non-video ads, just click on it once and it will load.
The only downside is that this isn't website specific. So if you want to watch a video on another site, you'll have to click on it before viewing. (It's only an extra half-second, so in my opinion, it's well worth it.)
hey i dunno, why don't you tell me
Thanks for that; I'll do just that next time I'm on the computer. Way better than refreshing until something other than the video player loads (and then giving up and just closing the tab).
Basically canon
Another full-screen video ad: http://sponsor.adverstitial.com/view/advertisement?loc=938&adv=2583919&camp=608467&w=300&h=250&rnd=2870690851998765346
The Tape Fairy
I installed a flashblocker and it helped. The weird thing is, I already had Click to play enabled, it just wasn't doing anything.
It's a good thing our last name isn't Drew, because then you'd be Nancy Drew and I'd be Andrew Drew. -Andy Botwin
Hopefully somebody technical will be wiling to install Firebug and send in the copy of the "element inspection" for one of these. I don't seem to ever get them, which makes them hard to trace.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty