ATS and spyware/cookies

I'm currently using Norton 360 on Windows right now, and have been for the past 15 minutes, loading several dozen pages. So far, I'm not encountering any alerts.

as i said it only comes up once in a while, once or twice every few months or so. I really dont know what to say to be honest. This si about ATS spyware and stuff, That picture is my input to it. Thats all i got to say.

I'm just trying to figure it out. Clearly, based on my attention to this and similar threads, we take the security and privacy of our members very seriously. I regularly scan the site to ensure everything remains tight.

The only thing I can guess is that somewhere, someone has an image in their post or as an avatar, that is hosted on a domain that is causing this alert.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that we MUST have more than one solitary member using Norton.

Can anyone else using Norton weigh in here?

I use Norton, and I haven't had any problems like were described.

I have a couple of other anti spy ware programs and they have not shown me any problems either.

I ran a very long scan today (after reading this thread!) and nothing came up.

[edit on 15-1-2008 by interestedalways]

My friend left abovetopsecret (not logged in as a user) open on his machine, after coming back something has installed itself onto his machine stating he has malicious software installed, it has now shut itself down and refuses to boot.

Good Work AboveTopSecret, your advertisers suck and implant spyware.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord

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I think you need to not be logged in, he was on the binaural music thread, after a while of the adverts updating it installed itself, he didn't see it happen as he was out for lunch but he had some naff "i'm really antivirus" software installed in the systray and when he moved the mouse it shut down.

The software it installs is called Fakerean trojan it appears to have been detected by Windows Defender although this may be a secondary Trojan that's been installed and not the original infection. I'll try and track the source domain

(Log removed and saved. It was skewing the page layout)

[edit on 9/10/2009 by SkepticOverlord]

There has to more to it than that.

The reports of malware that auto-installs from web-pages, with absolutely no user action, are exceptionally rare.

And since the last round of reports, I have a PC constantly refreshing our ads every few minutes 24/7... it has not encountered any problems.

If there was something else open, such as Outlook with previews, that may have been the culprit... as most web-spawned malware requires some form of trickery to get the user to click and install something.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord

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Both I and him are in the same mindset as you, nothing can be installed without user intervention, we're technically clued on computers and both software developers. I've never in my time seen malware install from visiting a website and thought it to be a myth, but somehow its arrived on, strange but true, live and learn.

Windows XP 32 bit
IE8 - popup blocker enabled
Symantec Endpoint protection 11 <-- Pretty useless software tbh
Windows defender
Spybot search an destroy

I've never had an issue but I use Server 2008 and Windows 7 (both 64bit versions) on my 3 machines in the office


I am intrigued so I'm gonna set up a sacrificial XP machine with no protection on it and leave it to see if anything happens

[edit on 9/10/2009 by spitefulgod]

got this the other day, and a worse one just now of the fake virus scanner. had to shut down my pc.

i am now having to run adaware daily when visiting ats. wtf

reply to post by SkepticOverlord

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why is it ats is currently so reluctant to belive it is always a user fault. i reported this the other day, with all the details. only logged on to go onto ats, and got this crap, it start out as a normal advert, then turns itself into the one that trys to trick you into installing.

why not look load up ATS from another IP, and keep refreshing the home page. the login page, bts, and bts home page, i guarantee you will find the problem.



[edit on 9-10-2009 by MR BOB]

[edit on 9-10-2009 by MR BOB]

well theres your problem using norton. its not very good from my experiances, and misses crap loads of nasty stuff.

i have found the current best thing to get is avast professoinal edition, and adaware.

I've never experienced it either... but there's a rather significant effort (especially in Germany/Eastern-Europe) to infect legitimate ad servers with the ability to deliver malicious payloads, so anything is ultimately possible.

I've refined my troubleshooting PC to cycle through our ads from a UK-based proxy server... hopefully we can reproduce the problem and narrow down the culprit.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord

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ok cool keep us updated

reply to post by SkepticOverlord

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I have experienced Malware infecting me from visiting a website.

Not this website.

A porn website.

My sacrificial lamb machine yielded no results.

Wh00t! I hate computers,

uummm....may I please have chocolate chip with macademia nut?


I would have signed up sooner had I known you were giving cookies.

reply to post by brotherforchrist

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To tell you the truth i've been finding dodgy looking cookies of late on my computer.... i have no idea where they come from.... the sites they relate to are ones i've never heard of or visited so do wonder where TF they come from...... especially those data mining ones.... i've seen a few of those recently and i never used to see them before.... i'm keeping a track of these things now and everytime i see them in my clean up operation i'll just delete them off.... i'm sure i can set it on my computer to not allow cookies from certain domains!!

Edit to add: I've just changed my settings to prompt me when cookies are about to plant themselves on my comp..... lets see if that works

[edit on 12-10-2009 by TruthxIsxInxThexMist]