malicious web page notification coming from my forum

Just went to login to my forum this morning from work and got the following message by our antivirus server :

A malicious web page has attempted to infect you with a web-based attack (drive-by download) or trick you into installing fake software (social engineering attack).

How can this be fix so my member's are not exposed to virus and get their computer infected?

Hello,

Do you have a screenshot of this message or the ad that likely caused this?

This is probably the result of an ad that caused this message to appear. Now to be clear it gives you that message but that doesn't mean your computer actually has a virus. It is a fake screen more then likely.

We have been trying to get rid of all these malicious ads for quite some time, however, we do need specific information about the problem ads so we can have our ad partners remove them.

You should make a report about the ad with the required information in this topic: https://help.forumotion.com/t147997-only-topic-malicious-inappropriate-ads .

-Brandon

I will try to get a screenshot when I get it again it's not every time. Their is a ad poping up but the message I got was by antivirus blocking fake websites etc..

Was it from your actual anti virus software (i.e mcafee, norton, avg, kaspersky, etc) or did it cone up as a webpage? Sometimes there are fake webpages made to look like anti virus software blocking it. Can you verify for sure whatever it was came from an actual anti virus?

In any case you should post that information and report in that topic when you get it again.

It was from and actual anti virus in this case Symantec as we have a server that is actively scanning all computers at work at all time. And since Im one of the admin of that server I got the alert on my computer as a normal user and also in my admin console.

The Ad tried to open as a pop up and our Symantec anti virus server blocked it and that's the message I got : A malicious web page has attempted to infect you with a web-based attack (drive-by download) or trick you into installing fake software (social engineering attack).

Ive been on my forum even since but the new adds pop are not triggering our Symantec system. I will keep and eye out and if I get it again I will try to get a screen shot of it.

Hello,

As you probably know forumotion uses ads to get money from our forums. The forum page itself is not malicious but the ad on the page is. The best way to get rid of the problem is to use credits to remove ads. Or you can hope fm cares about it's users and will get rid of the malicious/deceptive ads. Which I doubt will happen anytime soon

Justice™ wrote:Hello,

As you probably know forumotion uses ads to get money from our forums. The forum page itself is not malicious but the ad on the page is. The best way to get rid of the problem is to use credits to remove ads. Or you can hope fm cares about it's users and will get rid of the malicious/deceptive ads. Which I doubt will happen anytime soon

I beg to differ Justice. Forumotion very much cares about the quality and safety of our ads. As you may know we use ad partners and there are many for different parts of the world and not everyone gets the same ads. As such in order to have our ad partners remove the bad we need the specific information from users in the topic linked to before.

Whenever someone gives us all the info we relay it to our ad partners who remove it and we also block that ad on our system as well. Forumotion has even switched ad partners a couple times to try and resolve these issues.

All that said, to say that Forumotion does not care about its user or the quality or safety of the ads it displays is unfair and untrue. Forumotion has been doing its best to combat these issues and get rid of the bad ads. We have gotten rid of alot of them, but there are still bad ones out there that slip through the cracks.

Yeah......its kinda becoming common because 5 of the forumotion sites I own redirects me to some fake site without me clicking anything.....ads or not.....

brandon_g wrote:

Justice™ wrote:Hello,

As you probably know forumotion uses ads to get money from our forums. The forum page itself is not malicious but the ad on the page is. The best way to get rid of the problem is to use credits to remove ads. Or you can hope fm cares about it's users and will get rid of the malicious/deceptive ads. Which I doubt will happen anytime soon

I beg to differ Justice. Forumotion very much cares about the quality and safety of our ads. As you may know we use ad partners and there are many for different parts of the world and not everyone gets the same ads. As such in order to have our ad partners remove the bad we need the specific information from users in the topic linked to before.

Whenever someone gives us all the info we relay it to our ad partners who remove it and we also block that ad on our system as well. Forumotion has even switched ad partners a couple times to try and resolve these issues.

All that said, to say that Forumotion does not care about its user or the quality or safety of the ads it displays is unfair and untrue. Forumotion has been doing its best to combat these issues and get rid of the bad ads. We have gotten rid of alot of them, but there are still bad ones out there that slip through the cracks.

What I said there is that I don't think the ads problem will be solved soon if at all, not that forumotion does not care about users.

So you say Forumotion cares about the users more than they do about money? I don't think so

Justice™ wrote:Or you can hope fm cares about it's users and will get rid of the malicious/deceptive ads. Which I doubt will happen anytime soon

The way you worded it gave the impression that forumotion does not care about it's users which of course it does.

Of course forumotion cares about money too as databases and servers are not free to maintain and the employees certainly do not work for free.

My point was, that just because forumotion needs the ads for it to make money, does not mean it supports or endorse malicious or decieving ads. They don't, but the problem is like I said we use many different ad partners across different parts of the world. Not everyone gets the same ads either. They change depending on what part of the world they are in.

That said in order for us to find and get rid of deceptive and bad ads we need users to report them to us. That requires ads to be on for this to happen.

That said, putting the obvious money stuff aside, even if forumotion had unlimited money and could disable the ads without losing revenue (I an being very hypothical here.... Of course this not the case), it still would solve the real problem as in order for us to find and get rid of the bad ads, the ads have to be on and be seen and then reported to us so that they can be taken down.

Forumotion has resolved alot of the ads and most of the ones reported to them, unfortunatelly ones do slip through the cracks like I said and when this happens and it is reported, then they deal with it.