Strange Behavior on ATS

I'm in a weird situation. ATS is behaving oddly. No images will load, whatsoever. Even the ever-present ATS logo behaves as if it does not exist. As if it points to a non-existent image url. I asked in the chat room if anyone else was having problems. There was a unanimous "no". At the suggestion of Omega85, I pinged www.abovetopsecret.com

My first ping resulted in 100% packet loss. I pinged again and got very delayed response times (pictured). I pinged Google and got decent response times. Only ATS is affected... I was at first unable to get into the chatroom, but was finally able to by establishing a proxy for a moment, which let me get in...

NOTE: Running ATS through a proxy server displays perfectly fine!! Does this mean my ISP is blocking ATS content???

Here are the images of what ATS looks like to me. No logos, no avatars, very slow loading time, and the live feed never loads... (NOTE: I cannot even SEE these images!!)

ATS live feed in Google Chrome (my primary browser of choice)

ATS live feed in Safari (secondary browser)

The Forums

A thread... (no avatars whatsoever)

The ping of ATS and Google...

Odd...not having any trouble here...did you try recycling the modem, cleaning out your cache & refreshing your IP? Don't know that it'd make a difference...but it can't hurt.

Edit: BTW don't use Chrome...just my opinion what with the google sharing policies & all...if you care about that sort of thing - I recommend firefox

It appears to me that you have been image banned. You have been viewing too many images on ATS and this privilege has been taken.

Seriously though have you tried updating your Adobe?

Try firefox yet? If that doesn't help have you ever tried a bootable linux distro? That might help. My first recommendation would be to try another browser. Good luck. Oh and I don't recommend IE.

Well that's definitely a ghost!

Thanks for replies guys.

It's all browsers (Firefox and IE both behaved the same way).

Not image ban. For those of you who don't understand how a proxy works and what the implications of it are, let me explain (and this is why I put this in Conspiracies and not Computer Help).

A proxy reroutes your IP address through another IP address somewhere on earth so that the internet does not know where you really are. It basically tricks the host service into thinking you are from, say, Germany, instead of Pakistan (or whatever). This is why I believe my ISP is purposefully blocking ATS. If I can view images when my IP is shielded behind a proxy, it means that only MY IP address is being blocked.

Also, yes I cleared the cache, cookies, etc. yesterday. This has been ongoing for over 24 hours...

reply to post by OrphenFire


Hmm, no problem here either. I think that image ban comment was a joke, by the way as there is no such thing as an image ban. At least not on ATS.

That said, I am stumped if you have cleared your cache and what not? You're sure adobe,java,flash etc...Is all up to date on your computer?

Perhaps it could be an ad blocker?

reply to post by OrphenFire


Ha Ha my comment about an image ban was a joke lol there is no such thing. Anyway, I mentioned Adobe because the same thing happens to me from time to time after updating Adobe. I have to go searching for the update to fix it especially for youtube videos.

reply to post by DirtyLiberalHippie


Everything is up to date.

Image ban lol...

ATS only utilizes HTML and CSS. I don't think any java (except in chat) is involved... and definitely no flash. So none of that matters anyway.

The problem is this: My IP address is being "data blocked".

Mods, please move this somewhere besides computer help. I don't need technical assistance. I want to discuss the implications of a conspiracy against my usage of ATS.

files.abovetopsecret.com...

Can you view direct image links?

By the way, ATS does use _javascript, but only for the live feed I think. It's fetched via AJAX from a php file. Irrelevant I know.

Just for the record, _javascript is not related to java in any way, you don't need to update Java on your computer, _javascript is handled entirely by the browser.

I'm not sure why ATS puts a _ before "_javascript".

check for updates

Originally posted by zonetripper2065
update your adobe? check for other updates?

No Flash is used on this site.

Originally posted by SpearMint
files.abovetopsecret.com...

Can you view direct image links?

By the way, ATS does use _javascript, but only for the live feed I think. It's fetched via AJAX from a php file. Irrelevant I know.

Just for the record, _javascript is not related to java in any way, you don't need to update Java on your computer, _javascript is handled entirely by the browser.

I'm not sure why ATS puts a _ before "_javascript".

edit on 21-9-2012 by SpearMint because: (no reason given)

Nope. Only in the proxy. In normal browsing, it "loads" forever. After (who knows how long?) it eventually stops and results in a "invalid image url" as if the picture doesn't exist.

Press F12 in Chrome (or Safari I think), click on console and refresh that image. I'm not sure if it'll be able to tell you anything but it's worth a try. You can also see what communication is happening in the Network tab, and view loaded images in the Resources tab (in the first folder). Sorry if it doesn't help you at all, I can't think of anything else to do apart from contacting your ISP, have you restarted your modem?

reply to post by SpearMint


Yepp.... no images appear in Resources. Network shows an infinite "pending" as the status of the image, until it finally vanishes and takes me to the "webpage not available". The elements within THAT page show up fine, with straight "Successes".

Originally posted by SpearMint
Press F12 in Chrome (or Safari I think), click on console and refresh that image. I'm not sure if it'll be able to tell you anything but it's worth a try. You can also see what communication is happening in the Network tab, and view loaded images in the Resources tab (in the first folder). Sorry if it doesn't help you at all, I can't think of anything else to do apart from contacting your ISP, have you restarted your modem?

edit on 21-9-2012 by SpearMint because: (no reason given)

Check this out....

are you able to ping files.abovetopsecret.com...

is it ONLY this site producing strange loading times with images?

have you done a scan with hijack this?

are you at work or at home?

Can you get a second laptop on your network and see if it is ISP related or PC related?

when did it start happening? maybe try logging into your PC under your admin account or a different profile?

could your AV have updated and now considers something a risk?