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Blocking offensive ads

6 replies

whethergirl · 13/03/2013 11:06

Is there anyway to stop the type of adverts i get on my hotmail, facebook and mumsnet as I find them offensive?

Hotmail keeps showing one of those beauty secret ads but it's a picture of a woman with blood all over her face, like surgery has gone wrong, its horrible and I'm fed up of looking at it for the last few months.

Facebook/mumsnet is even worse. All I see are ads with cleavages and 'young asian desperate women' seeking boyfriends which I find so offensive and don't like my ds to see if he happens to look over my shoulder.

They are the main problems, but also, since getting my new laptop, some random words on websites are underlined and in blue, and when I happened to scroll over them (or click on them accidentally) it goes to a different website, any ideas how to stop this?

Would really appreciate any help, especially with the dating prostitution type ads.

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MisselthwaiteManor · 13/03/2013 12:34

There's an add-on called Adblock that you can get for Firefox or
chrome.

addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/

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Naoko · 13/03/2013 16:21

Adblock is great. Sounds like you've got some malware too though, I'd download and run Malwarebytes as well as installing an adblocker.

Also - on many websites, the kinds of ads you get are heavily targeted and tailored to your surfing behaviour and google searches. Is there anyone else who uses that laptop?

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whethergirl · 13/03/2013 17:12

YouHeardTheManTubbs thanks, that seems to have worked!

Naoko that's interesting, I'm the only one who uses this laptop, if my wifi is open for anyone to use, could that influence the ads? Otherwise I can perhaps understand the beauty ads, but don't know where the young asian cleavages would come from. I don't remember having this on my previous laptop, and I used Avast just as I do now.

What exactly is malware? Isn't that something Avast should be dealing with? I'm presuming Malwarebytes and Adblock are both compatible with Avast?

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MTSgroupie · 13/03/2013 17:30

At some point you clicked on something and that put a piece of malware on your laptop. So whenever you have your browser open, whether it's to check your email, FB or MN up pops these offensive ads.

The software mentioned will clear it out. Going forward be careful what you click. Sometimes a dummy 'you got messages in your inbox' window will pop up. Click the X to get ride of it. Often people will click OPEN or CLOSE which will result in the malware being downloaded onto your laptop.

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Naoko · 13/03/2013 17:31

Malware is malicious code that has through whatever means installed itself on your computer - you may have clicked a dodgy link, or opened an attachment, or installed something that looked innocuous but had something nastier hidden inside like a browser toolbar. All viruses are malware, but not all malware is a virus; Avast is excellent at protecting you from viruses but not necessarily at protecting you from other types of malware, which is why you should use antivirus in conjunction with some form of malware detection and removal.

Other types of malware range from the relatively innocuous 'adware' (which has legitimate uses, for example if a program gives you the option of paying for an ad-free version or getting a copy that shows you advertising as you use it for free, but is malware when it's something that hides itself somewhere on your PC just to show you adverts you don't want to see and don't know why they're there) to the far more harmful keyloggers, which record every single keystroke you make and send them to the creator of the keylogger (which lets them, for example, steal your credit card details and passwords).

It is possible that the ads you are seeing are just the normal ads on those websites (I've no idea if Facebook shows you dating ads because I've been using adblock for years myself :o ), in which case you just use adblocker and are no longer bothered by them; but I'd want to make sure you haven't got any malware that's making this more of a problem than it actually should be because it does sound like unusual and poorly targeted advertising on the websites you name.

Your wifi being open shouldn't directly influence the type of ads you see as that's usually linked to the specific computer, not the network, but please encrypt it and put a password on it anyway - you leave yourself open to all sorts of other stuff with open networks.

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whethergirl · 14/03/2013 00:29

Thanks MTSgroupie I am very careful about what I click, but sometimes I will get java and windows updates, and although I generally presume are ok, I do wonder if they are genuine.

Thanks so much Naoko, such helpful advice. I don't think they are the normal ads as they even come up on mumsnet, and I know they wouldn't have them on here! Great explanation, will download Malwarebytes and check to see if I have a password lock on my wifi.

Thanks Much appreciated!

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