Dodgy ads?

[Wicky 11]

I was just going round the forum here, and I found one of those ads saying 'Open your mail. You have an unread message.' Or something like that. Well someone I know clicked on that once and it gave him a virus. So when I saw this I was like: "Oh, not these ads". Is there anything we could do? Just wondering..

[tengaku squared 291]

I have to agree, if there's a way to get rid of such 'dodgy ads', it'll greatly benefit the site as a whole.

[Mia Ehru 11]

Well.. I agree that website ads are sometimes hairy and that blocking them is wonderful, beneficial for everyone: the loading of the page itself is quicker, its appearance is ''cleaner'' and just as you said.. it's more secure.

Yet in this case, we're talking about simple text/image ads. (At least in my case).It's already a good thing that there are no pop-ups or embedded audio/video ads on this website. (Yay! - We should be thankful for that, really..).

Leaving that aside, it's also true that most frequent web users are used to dealing with these ads.. However, things still happen. It's not like everyone knows about them or like we mustn't click all adverts. There are harmful ones and there are not-harmful ones. It's just a matter of experience and intuition I guess.

That being said, the main idea here I believe would be getting rid of/blocking these ads. So.. as far as I know, ad-filtering is just usually a matter users themselves should try to take care of. And actually, it's pretty easy nowadays. Most well-known browsers (such as Firefox, Chrome..) and some antivirus softwares include filters which block those ads when activated.

If these filters in question don't actually work perfectly well, there are even certain softwares which optimize this function. And I repeat, they're really easy to find and quite easy to use. (In case none of these things worked.. well.. we would most likely be talking about an infection by some random malware or something..)

About a solution which could be done "externally", not regarding the users, I really don't know myself..

[Kid the Phantom Thief 252]

*Completely ignores all kinds of ads*

[Southpaw 61]

I don't know for sure, but the ads might be helping defray the cost of keeping the site running

if you really don't like them, get an ad-blocker :/

[Chekhov MacGuffin 1089]

I don't know for sure, but the ads might be helping defray the cost of keeping the site running

if you really don't like them, get an ad-blocker :/

They probably are defraying the cost of running, but even so the sketchy ones need to be blocked. If I knew the adserver I could figure out how to report them. Googlesyndication.com is the one here?

[Eisuke 3]

You just need to learn to ignore them completely. This site probably won't get rid of them because they earn money for the site, that money is then used to keep the site up. Sorry but there is nothing you can really do.

[tengaku squared 291]

This site probably won't get rid of them because they earn money for the site, that money is then used to keep the site up. Sorry but there is nothing you can really do.

Certain ads can be reported, and the generally annoying ones like the 'you've got mail' ads gotta go, IMO.

[Wicky 11]

Thank you everyone for sharing ideas etc. Is there anyway? I've got IE8 and I've checked pretty much everywhere on 'blocking ads' and couldn't find anything. However, I am greatful that we don't have pop ups as Mia Ehru said,because I do have Pop-up blocker turned ON but, some ads kinda beat it [not on this site].. I understand if the site HAS to keep these ads to keep the site running, which I would die to keep this site running.