Odd advertising at top of pages.

FeatherHarp · Post by **FeatherHarp** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:04 pm

Could this just be a PC problem?

I went to this site using Firefox....Netscape and Safari browsers on my Mac and no advertising anywhere to be found for me. Very strange indeed!

Post by **Hilary** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 8:37 am

Crystal is trying to figure out how to get rid of the spam that is causing the problem. Hopefully she'll figure this out soon!

L in Ontario · Post by **L in Ontario** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 8:55 am

Thanks Hilary!

FeatherHarp · Post by **FeatherHarp** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 11:00 am

Ok...just letting you know my Mac is not excluded from this spam....I just found the travel stuff when I went to look at the Gallery pics and also went into the Site Related topic to post here....grrrr!

And yes...thanks Hilary for your efforts....hope this spam gets the axe soon!

atarasi · Post by **atarasi** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:17 am

I've been getting it for a few daysw now. I thought that maybe we weren't donating enough money to the tip jar. I donated a little when I first joined.

Post by **Hilary** » Sun Nov 23, 2008 11:37 am

Tips go to Crystal, who is working on the problem. Maybe she'll work harder! Last I heard first efforts to kill this had failed, but she was going to do some more research. Sorry folks!

kittani79 · Post by **kittani79** » Sun Nov 30, 2008 2:06 am

I posted on another forum I hang out on with a bunch of my geekier friends, and got these responses. Perhaps one of them will be helpful, so I'm going to post them here.

Kazin

what forum technology are they using? it sounds like someone had or has access to their root directory to change the link like that. It is also possible that they just added a piece of code as an include.

Since its a board, her best bet would be to go to the support forums and post the problem there. Especially if its phpbb - they are very helpful with that.

*edit*

Looking through the source - i think it is phpbb or phpbb2 - depending on how old the site is. It sounds like they might have downloaded a bad template? Not sure here - ill keep poking around and see what i can find. What is throwing me off is that they do not have any of the identifiers that you usually find in premade boards (for instance "powered by phpBB" or similar)

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Boeufmort

I'm guessing that either the template was modified, which means their account was hacked and the hosting company needs to take care of that pronto, or an SQL injection was used to replace data that the template is pulling out, which means they need to update their php engine or bulletin board software. Those php systems are horrible about that.

Either way, the hosting company (which is DreamHost) should be able to fix it. Or, at least, they should be responsible, that doesn't mean they'll fix it in a timely fashion.

Looks like PageRank spammers are getting nasty. I had to clean one of those "oh noes you have a virus buy our anti-virus software!" extortion schemes from my parents' computer over Thanksgiving. I'm almost ready to stop programming and start getting into computer security, just so I can learn how to track these people down and take a crowbar to their knees.

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Ristoril

The other problem is that it looks fine in IE, so ~75% of their visitors probably don't even care.

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Nikolis

You, or the site webmaster, might want to visit the official support forums for further advice. I looked around, but don't really have an idea. The information contained on those two forums are static, which means they don't change. That causes doubt as to whether they're generated ads or not. Also, if it were part of the template, then it would be effecting every other forum, too, and not just two of them.

Just post here:

http://discussion.dreamhost.com/postlis ... d=3rdparty

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alex · Post by **alex** » Sun Nov 30, 2008 9:52 pm

while you have Crystal working on it

she has plans to resume the construction and maintenance of the site ? Still alot of potentially very interesting articles are missing...

Post by **Hilary** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 1:34 am

I passed on the info to Crystal - contacting Dreamhost sounds like it makes sense! I also passed on the desire for more articles on Finchinfo.

alex · Post by **alex** » Sat Dec 06, 2008 1:34 pm

sweet. I hope she'll become active again

hilljack13 · Post by **hilljack13** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 6:56 pm

I'm getting some cruise/travel info on a few pages. At home and work. Glad to see it's not just me.

alex · Post by **alex** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 6:41 pm

it does seem to be fixed now

Just need to get Crystal back to work on the site now...

B CAMP · Post by **B CAMP** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 6:51 pm

Alex
I have been wondering what kind of finch's do you keep?

alex · Post by **alex** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:30 pm

Zebras for now. 10 of them. And a cockatiel, but thats not a finch.

Just bought my first house and now I plan to build myself an indoor aviary in one of the rooms.

Hence my interest for more articles, especially on care, aviary plans/examples/pictures, compatibility between species, etc...

B CAMP · Post by **B CAMP** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:06 pm

A lot of the information you need is in the link to the left http://www.finchinfo.com/index.php