Advertisement Redirect or Malware?

[Allroses]

Hey everyone, a reader sent me a message that said she was getting redirected from the main page of my comic http://allroses.comicgen.com to http://sponsor.adverstitial.com/view/ad ... 6897328161

sponsor.adverstitial.com seems to be behind redirects and full screen pop-ups if you google search them, but it seems there was some confusion as to whether it was malware or actually from one of the ads. She told me it only happens on the main page, but not if she clicks a link quickly, or exits and goes back a few times, and it doesn't happen every time, but randomly. Perhaps 1 out of 3.

Does anyone else have this issue? Or do the mods have any insight as to whether we use anything with that website?

edit: Additional info. I found one website with technical jargon saying that the site originating the redirect request is ad.cpmaxads.com That page is here if anyone cares to check it out

[Cope]

That's weird, because I'm pretty sure Comic Genesis only runs Project Wondetful ads these days, which has a better reputation than most ad vendors. Does Disqus run ads? I didn't see any, but that might be the source. What browser and operating sytem is this reader running? I refreshed the page in Firefox and Internet Explorer on my Windows 7 machine several times to no effect.

[Allroses]

She's running Chrome on Windows 7

You have the option to run ads on Disqus, if you want to make some money I think? But I don't have that enabled. It's weird that it's only the main page too, since ads and disqus are on every page. I also have chrome, on Windows 8, and I've never seen it happen though.

[Allroses]

I have had a second user mention that they are getting the full page ads as well. =\

[Dr Neo Lao]

I refreshed a bunch of times with Firefox on Linux and didn't get the pop-up or re-direct (no adblockers installed).

I did have a look through your code and noticed that you have two </ body> and </ html> tags in there. Shouldn't be too much of an issue but you may want to go over your templates. Sitemeter has some Javascript running, but you wouldn't expect them to be launching redirects.

[Allroses]

I had one sort of redirect happen to me, just one day, and I think it was because the ad that was trying to load was a tower ad, whereas comicgen only has the banner style? So it was just a white window with the ad. Not a malicious looking one. For package shipping or something. It hasn't happened again, so it's a rare thing, I guess. And it had been too long for the other people that it happened to, and no one remembered if that was what happened to them! *shrug*

[Dr Neo Lao]

Just let your readers know if something like this scomes up to grab a screenshot or at least try and identify which Ad caused the popup (or at least what was there when it happened). It'll help identify the cause. Until (or if) it happens again, not much more to do I guess.

[LibertyCabbage]

It's the Sitemeter.com meter, which is only on the main page. Its Javascript displays a pop-up image from an advertiser.

Code: Select all

onPageLoad:function() {
var newIFrame = document.createElement("iframe");
		newIFrame.frameBorder = 0;
		newIFrame.width = 0;
		newIFrame.height = 0;
		newIFrame.src = "http://mpp.vindicosuite.com/?y=3&t=h&u=" + encodeURIComponent(document.location) + "&r=" + encodeURIComponent(SiteMeter.getReferralURL());