Strange hyperlinks

[gerberdude]

Friends,

When I browse some sites, I am hit with these strange links that appear in the site that I am viewing. A word will appear to be green and will present an ad when it is scrolled over. I think this is some type of spyware but maybe not. Any help? I am using WinXP with Internet Explorer.

Gerberdude

[Force Flow]

It's a form of advertising that helps maintain and fund the site.

Alternative browsers, such as firefox and opera, automatically block this form of advertising.

[juppy]

I'm using Firefox, and I still see the green links. Am I missing something?

[rwrw1]

I was at a friends house the other day and was showing him my website. The site is gambling related and to make a long story short when my site opened in his IE browser about every other word was a link which when clicked on took my visitors to other casino sites which in short it was stealing my traffic. I thought someone had hacked my site so I rushed home to fix it but it worked fine on my computer and other computers I checked. So this may be something like you are seeing. I later checked other sites from my friends computer and all the gambling sites did the same thing. For example the word casino or gambling was always turned into a link and directed the user to a casino affiliate program. This virus was easy to see on his computer because the sites looked very strange with so many links. Nothing like the small links you see on this or other sites which are legit links. example ( AMD Processor ) Anyway I don't know what the virus is or how to fix it but I can tell you there is a virus much like what you are talking about.

[Jaggannath]

rwrw1, what you are talking about sounds more like a spybot of some description, if it's only triggered by certain sites which are casinos.
What I'd suggest is that you run Spybot and Ad-Aware over his computer, if his anti-virus scan shows nothing

[Statica]

Originally Posted by juppy I'm using Firefox, and I still see the green links. Am I missing something?

Yes. The first thing you need is to be able to block out the words. For that you need the Adblock extension for your Firefox.
Then you need to selectively block out the ad company that is being used on the site. It's usually a .JS script that is doing it.
Take your Adblock+Firefox browser to a site that puts up these ads. Now click the Adblock link that appears on the lower right corner of your browser. It will show you the elements that have been loading up. This domain is a common culprit, but not necessary the only one - http://txt.vibrantmedia.com/.........
So all you do is set a filter that goes http://*.vibrantmedia.com/*
Mind you, that is only one example, a bit of a practised eye will show you what scripts are rogue and what are part of the site for content.

[juppy]

Thanks for the info, Statica! Much appreciated!