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
Fear me
Getting an occasional ad on the left side that shoves everything on the page to the right.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Can you send a screenshot of this? What device are you on when this happens?
I keep getting these "Popzilla" ads for Kickstarter in the lower right of the screen, despite having paid for no ads. Any idea why that is? I posted about it initially here:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=14379435040A90438600&page=1#1
The underlying HTML is using an image id of "featured-backers-img", which I guess means it's an ad for people who have backed TV Tropes. Shouldn't I see NO ads at all, including these "featured backers" ads?
- Tim
Lost in Space
Those are the Kickstarter perk rewards for individuals who contributed enough to get their own ads run on our site. They supersede the "no ads ever" perk level. And, frankly, they are about as unobtrusive as ads get.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Quick like...
I'm having a weird issue where every so often, I'll get a pop-up at the lower-right corner of my screen that asks me if I want to open some file that could be harmful to my computer. It's only happening on TV Tropes, so I'm assuming that the source of it might be somewhere in the coding or the ads.
Perpetually Confused
That hijacking mobile popup I posted about is still occurring.
Edit: Actually slightly different
edited 29th Jul '15 12:17:08 PM by Ghilz
Do you have a screenshot?
I've blocked this domain everywhere and reached out to our partners. Please let me know if you continue to see this.
You Give Me Fever
For now, I've been loading the page until they go away but is there a way to shrink those giant, page stretching banner adds (E Surance's come to mind)?
edited 8th Aug '15 6:32:18 PM by IndirectActiveTransport
That's why he wants you to have the money. Not so you can buy 14 Cadillacs but so you can help build up the wastes
Fear me
^^ A Windows laptop. I'll try to get a screenshot next time, but at least it's not as frequent as the fake flash ones.
edited 22nd Aug '15 1:42:40 AM by Chabal2
The Unknown
The Hulu app on mobile is being a bitch and has click box larger than it should be.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Have a screenshot?
The Unknown
No because I have literally no idea how to do that on a phone.
edited 18th Sep '15 9:58:11 AM by Karxrida
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
hey i dunno, why don't you tell me
Try hitting the Home and Power buttons at the same time. I'm pretty sure both iPods and Androids do that (and maybe iPhones).
Wait, Hulu app? Uh, what? I think you're asking the wrong site's tech support. :/
edited 21st Sep '15 11:57:34 PM by Knowlessman
i care but i'm restless, i'm here but i'm really gone, i'm wrong and i'm sorry, baby
I am now a shiny stone~
Droids may not have a physical Home Button :V
The three finest things in life are to splat your enemies, drive them from their turf, and hear their lamentations as their rank falls!
These are the voyages...
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+to+take+a+screenshot+on+android
edited 22nd Sep '15 6:38:00 AM by Ripsaw
Be careful what you wish for, 'cause you might just get it all...
The Mod with the Migraine
Just had something try to autodownload from pixel.mathtag.com ... never thought I'd be glad to be stuck with an out-of-date browser at work.
That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
Chaotic Greedy
I keep being redirected to the following address on Android browser. It started on various webcomic threads and followed me to this very "add post" page.
http://www.mobi-tips.com/tools/aliexpress/fr/index.php
Mweheheh
I'm seeing a lot of popup ads claiming that I won a free phone. There's no way to get rid of them (even clicking the "cancel" button will take you to the screen) and they're quite literally everywhere. I'm on iOS, but I suspect the issue is more widespread.
Peace is the only battle worth waging.
Mikon :3
https://www.uber.com/?click=5613e275e4b0b5ea42c63270
http://c.afftrx.com/?s=1474901&tid1=27f7bc1d0d46f7b61ef2&subid=5674
https://www.uber.com/?click=5613e2d1e4b03ec2cf49c78f
Got all these ads in the past 2 minutes. Device is an iPhone 6.
And here's more:
https://www.uber.com/?click=5613e592e4b03ec2cf49fb13
https://www.uber.com/?click=5613e5cee4b0d468ff944ec8
https://www.uber.com/?click=5613e5fbe4b03bf165ec9029
edited 6th Oct '15 8:18:54 AM by Morgikit
We do our best to block both these types of ads, but they occasionally slip through. Can you take a screenshot of the popup if you see it again and pass the URL along?
I presume this is a redirect to the Uber app on your phone or something? Can you tell who it is coming from before you get to Uber? I will block Uber and see if that does the trick.
edited 6th Oct '15 11:23:26 AM by drewski
Mikon :3
If it was redirecting through another URL, it was too quickly for me to notice. Sorry.
Trans Siberian Anarchestra (it/they)
iOS, Safari - I was just on the various The Mothman Prophecies subpages and was redirected three different times to a series of urls; it only completely finished once, but it looked something like this.
- First to a domain starting with jx-something. (Stopped it here the first time, but didn't get the url.)
- That redirected to http://tracking.crobo.com/aff_r?offer_id=15287&aff_id=2454&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcontrol.kochava.com%2Fv1%2Fcpi%2Fclick%3Fcampaign_id%3Dkocookie-jam5582c604e37f8570abbfbd6cd3%26network_id%3D299%26click_id%3D102196f82b874ecb90f8da8dba14a2%26device_id%3Ddevice_id%26site_id%3D2454&urlauth=580430572065568602837656135440
- Then back to the jx-domain
- Then to the App Store... but I disallow it from accessing mobile data, so whichever app it was didn't actually load. :/ Sorry.
edited 6th Oct '15 2:25:07 PM by Noaqiyeum
The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable
Mikon :3
Got these ads on Safari, iPhone 6, all in the last 15 minutes. All but the first three I got just trying to navigate to this thread to report them.
http://jhojr.voluumtrk.com/2dc36340-c136-4190-9fb9-97e30da4cee9
We are working to block the redirects. Sadly, it's not as simple as it should be.
On the forum on mobile devices I get a pop up for one of those fake malware scanning site that I cant avoid being forwarded off site to said ill intentioned site except by backing out.
The pop up has the ip 172.68.67.67
Took a screenshot of the popup