

Ask HN: Why am I getting ads on HN? - bazookaBen

can anyone explain this?<p>here's some proof
http://i.imgur.com/axJdD.png<p>PS: i'm accessing the HN from Hong Kong, hence the Chinese ads.
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lutusp
It appears that your browser has been compromised, infected with malware. To
test this idea, try opening HN in a different browser, or uninstall and
reinstall your present browser, making sure to delete absolutely everything
before reinstalling.

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mugsie
also, check what browser extensions are installed... in chrome it is fairly
easy to remove ones you don't want / need

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infinity
To me it looks like you have some kind of spyware on your computer. Check your
local hosts file for unwanted entries:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file)>

Also have a look at the source code of the HN page if there is anything which
might explain this behaviour. Maybe it is running inside a frame site which
opens the ads? There are so many possibilities ...

If there really is some malware on your system I recommend the procedure known
as _Nuke it from Orbit_ : Wipe everything clean, install a clean operating
system, restore important things from a backup. And change all your passwords
from a clean system.

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bazookaBen
localhosts: check

i suspect it's the free WiFis that require you to comply with their terms and
conditions. They probably catch the traffic and inject text ads into the HTML,
which arguably is quite clever and malicious.

i'll get more data to confirm this

