Starting yesterday I’ve been getting pop-up ads that are covering the bottom of my display screen, sometimes as much as one-third, for various products and services not related to Kalmbach or railroading in general, model or real.
Now I don’t mind pop-ups on the top of the screen, provided they don’t cause a problem with what I’m looking at, and I don’t mind the ads on the right side of the screen for various products up to and including womens wear and swimwear. I know pop-ups are one way of paying the bills, but this is really getting annoying.
I’m not seeing the same on any other website I go to.
I have it SEVERELY on the ChromeBook I use as a ‘road terminal’, which of course runs the Chrome browser which I otherwise loathe.
The fun is that there is also an ad up at the head of the page that loads and pushes the content down. To where the clever little expanding window blossoms to cover the available text window on this device as soon as you go to start typing … surprise, surprise, resulting in a clickthrough, doubtless irrevocable modifications to everyone’s tracked list of my “ad preferences” … heaven knows what else.
Personally, I now announce that I will BOYCOTT any product or service that appears in one of these bottom ads, and I will work to the greatest of my influence to persuade others likewise. Perhaps passing that along to the monitors that gauge our preferences by keywords or themes in our posts will get the clever little vixens progrmming the adware to straighten up and fly right.
I was prepared to be forgiving to continue the free content, but this bouncing expanding crapware has finally gone too far.
I’m running Linux, and see no ads. I’m using the Chromium browser and using “Ublock” to keep the scripts in check. You can look at the following screenshot , which depicts my blocker listing the items it has blocked. I believe that mkt932.com and powerad.ai are the worst offenders. Those with a red tab on the far left side of the list are the ones I’m blocking
For those who are able, I do recommend installing a “hosts” file. Instructions are available on the net.
The best thing is that it’s passive - essentially a filter. This eliminates the possibility that you might actually be installing malware when you install software that’s supposed to block malware. Some blocker programs are better than others.
I do run a program that looks for cookies, etc on a scan that I run once a week on my desktop computer. Before I put on a hosts file, I was getting well over 1,000 hits each week. This morning I had 140. I could probably reduce that to near zero if I chose to dig into what the scan program file finds and modify the hosts file.
And I now see virtually no advertising. I do get the occasional pop up requesting that I disable my ad blocker. I just say “sure” and then ignore it.
Our tech guy installed Ghostery a few years back. Every once in a while it blocks something that sounds interesting, but I’ve not had this problem with non-related ads.
Just the occasional ad on the Newswire asking me to subscribe to Trains at this fantastic rate…annoying when it disrupts the news I’m reading, because (a) I’m a lifetime subscriber, and (b) you have to be a subscriber to access that site.
It may be that they are aiming at people like me. I subscribe to Model Railroader, so they probably are trying to get MR readers to subscribe to Trains, also. MR readers have access to all the Kalmbach forums.
They’re trying to get me to take on credit… credit card offers… loans… etc… and now an ad for something to do with the airport in Toronto. Splicing it all together I’mguessin the universe wants me to take a vacation on credit…