As you may know, I surf the web on a Mac with Firefox AdBlocked up the eyeballs. No popups ever pop (and if they do they go into a new tab) and banner-ad-choked pages are a delicious sea of white. It’s always quite a shock when I use someone else’s browser to discover that the web is full of ads and popups, not to mention the threat of viruses and trojans.
That said, occasionally one gets through, and today I had a doozy. I loaded up a MySpace profile and clicked on the View Pics link. Suddenly my browser was shrunk to a teeny box in the corner and a Javascript box emerged from the top bar (which on a PC would look more like an alert box) informing me that I needed to run a critical thingy or something. Having other tabs open I didn’t fancy losing everything in that window so I clicked Cancel, the window came back and a large animated GIF pretended to do a system analysis reporting 53 critical errors in my registry, or some shit. I closed the tab and another one opened recommending I download some application called Win-thingy as a matter of urgency. I closed the window and it all seemed to be over, though I wonder if I’ll find some pointless Windows files scattered around my hard drive next time I do a clean-up.
For a few seconds I was in the Hinterweb and it was rather telling. This is how most people live their online lives, walking down Crack Alley with a “mug me” sign stuck on their backs. But most worrying of all was that this piece of paranoia came from clicking on a link in MySpace, currently owned by Murdoch’s News International who are on record as wanting to maximise their advertising dollar from the operation (as well they should given what they paid for it). This wasn’t a pop-up or a banner ad. This was a big fat lie that at best you could call social engineering.
I don’t hold the Murdoch empire in much regard, it must be said, but if this sort of thing, especially if it’s authorized, is beyond all that. It’s the behaviour of scumbags and hucksters not one of the largest media companies in the world. Sort it out, MySpace.
oh I get that same “ad” sometimes when I use isohunt – and that’s using firefox with adblocker- it takes three x closes (I don’t use cancel buttons on these things – I don’t trust them not to have changed the cancel button to really be a ‘yes’ button) to get rid of it. So it’s not a Murdoch thang – just your standard money-grubbing thing. Which is always reprehensible.
Oh, I wouldn’t be at all surprised with something like isohunt – you go to sites like that with your eyes wide open. It’s just rather worrying/annoying that MySpace is taking these sort of “ads” given its prominance and the reputation (as a business I mean) of the parent company.
For a start, why do they need to? Surely they can get non-evil ads?
(Clarification – the “cancel” button was on the Javascript message, though I take your point as these are just scripts)
I can hardly navigate through Myspace anymore because of these pop-ups. I sent a comment to Tom saying “these pop-ups make me wanna die” and he wrote back saying I have spyware because Myspace doesn’t support pop-up ads.
I have a Mac and I use Firefox, but I only get these pop-ups on Myspace.
Have you had any more pop-up problems on Myspace? I wonder if there is a way to get rid of them? And I wonder if I do have spyware?