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
Tyrannoraptoran Reptiliomorph
I'm getting ads for 10 free Adobe Stock images (which have been mentioned upthread) that automatically bring up the keyboard to search for an image in the ad, which keeps scrolling the page up and down, making it hard to read the wiki and making it hard to type in the Add Post field. (As I said, we've had problems with them before). Can someone blacklist them?
edited 7th Mar '16 2:53:02 PM by Lymantria
Join the Five-Man Band cleanup project!
This ad company called Sekindo is becoming incredibly aggressive with video links for health fads. Every second page I visit now has about 3 different auto-playing video ads, which is both distracting and slows the website down quite a bit.
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yeah, same here. Thank goodness they're muted by default.
Me too - I can't really see how three videos playing at once could work as advertising
I've also been hit by the Sekindo auto-playing video ads.
Also, the three videos tend to be the same.
edited 10th Mar '16 8:01:38 PM by IchigoPockyChama
Chaotic Greedy
The Gunnerkrigg Court forum thread just redirected me to this site (which I hxxp'd for safety):
hxxp://d.billyaffcontent.com/nb?url=http%3A%2F%2Fplay.leadzu.com%2Fred%2F%3Fcode%3DAY14LSOS80QY%26a%3Dbmconv_20160311192542_fc15a67f_199e_466e_a010_25aefcf09061%26PUBID%3D2236&id=trkba6bc9b4-d336-4143-b8be-e62235206ab5&nid=1457720742970
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
Chaotic Greedy
The Webcomics Conversations page just redirected my Android Browser.
I managed to grab the first step if the redirection chain from my history:
hxxp://trk.billytesting.com/nb?url=https%3A%2F%2Fim.mobsweet.com%2Fgo.php%3Fid%3DrZ18qZenq3yp%26p1%3Dbmconv_20160312140721_26e8c4ae_2180_4da2_9e39_e040e7013368&id=trk4250f2f5-d26f-4b37-a147-b3026d14e648&nid=1457788041480
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
Shadow of Legends
Yeah, can we kill Sekindo? That shit actually causes lag/freezes on some lower performing machines, and as you can tell from my language, I'm getting pretty pissed off with this...
edited 12th Mar '16 11:42:51 PM by MicoolTNT
"We can handle what is true, for we are already living it."
We are trying hard to block all auto-play video ads. Sekindo is the worst and figures out ways through not only our filters, but Google and the rest of our ad partners. We hope to have them blocked again in the next couple days.
hey i dunno, why don't you tell me
Just got hit with a complete redirect to this url:
url
edited 13th Mar '16 7:09:49 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
As did I. The site promised to redirect back to T Vtropes, but sent me to a blank tab instead when the countdown ran out. Edit: And then it happened again when I hit "Post."
url
edited 13th Mar '16 7:52:14 PM by HeraldAlberich
A real bad hombre
Yeah I got that one too. Can't remember the URL sadly.
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison
These are the voyages...
I'm getting "Suspicious Activity" warnings/blocks from my firewall. URL: tcp ://d2jsa98b45howd.cloudfront.net:443/ (remove the space between "tcp" and the colon).
Be careful what you wish for, 'cause you might just get it all...
These are the voyages...
.swf is a Flash file. I have Flashblock installed and enabled, so I don't see it.
Where is it trying to download from? What URL?
Be careful what you wish for, 'cause you might just get it all...
Quick like...
I'm having the .swf problem too. It happened a couple months back, then disappeared. Now it's trying to download itself every few pages or so.
Stopped today.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
Grr... <3
Are websites supposed to supply identity information? Firefox has begun complaining that this site does not supply identity information. (What does that even mean?)
Is there a limit on the size of banner ads? Because I've been frequently getting an absurdly large Amazon ad (pushes the top of the actual content almost halfway down the page on a 1280x1024 monitor), I'm just not sure if this is a reportable issue.
Chaotic Greedy
Sounds like something about HTTPS without certificate, or something the like. Do you have an extension like "HTTPS Everywhere"?
I just got an ad that temporarily redirected me, then failed to load the ad or redirect me to the actual page afterward. URL
Grr... <3
Nope, just vanilla firefox. I don't even think tvtropes supports https.
hey i dunno, why don't you tell me
Just got hit with the redirect again, then went back and tried to get in here so I could post about it, then got stuck in a fucking endless loop of redirects, and ended up walking backward through my page history trying to get out of it.
FIND IT.
KILL IT.
KILL IT HARD.
urls
Second one (sent to after hitting Continue to Site): [2]
Last one (redirected through): [3]
Fucking redirect writers need to quit and get ANY OTHER JOB. ANY. OTHER. JOB.
i care but i'm restless, i'm here but i'm really gone, i'm wrong and i'm sorry, baby
hey i dunno, why don't you tell me
Uh, should these Google hits be at all worrying?
Or should they not, because I don't think I've installed anything off a website recently? :|
(Context: that website name is at the front of all these redirect URLs.)
edited 18th Mar '16 6:32:58 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
Thanks.
I'm getting it as both a fat square ad on the side, and as a long bar along the top or bottom. Should I report both versions, or just one?
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!