Today, we have a warning to share with all Google / Blogger bloggers.
We all like to add cute gadgets to our blogs, but we have to be very careful of what we post, not merely for our own safety but because we are responsible for the safety of our visitors.
For several years now, we have been coming across a number of blogs that have a popunder when we click to leave a comment. Always before our anti virus has kept whatever site the popunder is to from loading. The popunder will load but with a message from our antivirus the site is blocked because it's potentially dangerous.
A couple of days ago, we came across the same problem but with a new twist. What loaded was a popunder that was literally and visibly counting down the seconds to installing a downloading program that would not be flagged by our (or your) av because it is a legitimate program (although we'd never heard of it before) -- a downloading program that enables an easy, fast download of videos or multiple programs. So why was it about to download and why was it "necessary" to download it at all, especially on the sly? We can only think of one reason.
If you are wondering what's the problem if the program is harmless, remember this is done without visitors knowing it. And just because the program itself is supposedly safe, doesn't mean anything downloaded with it would be. We have a good av, but not everyone does. And things can happen.
We try to remember to watch the bottom of our monitor screen to see what's loading and to count the new windows because of past experience, so we brought up the window, saw the counter and closed the window in time. But most visitors would not notice the extra open window, especially since there might be a delay in opening..
We always notified the blog owner and when a particular globe widget (often two separate globes) were deleted from the sidebar, the popunders stopped. The same thing happened last night. The blog owner deleted the 2 globes from the blog and the problem was resolved Any time the blog owner has refused to delete the globes, we have deleted their blog from our bookmarks. Online safety is that important!
Over the course of several years, the comment popunders we've run into have all been associated with the same widget - a spinning globe counter from Geovisite. We hope this post will serve as a warning to those who are considering installing it or those who already have it posted on their site. And also to remind you to be alert to what is happening as you surf the web.
On another blog subject, as much as we'd like to do a tirade on the evil's of the Blogger word verification and why it is totally unnecessary to use it and chases off many visitors who would like to comment, we won't But when Blogger made the mass switch to the new interface, word verification was turned on by default. So we will admonish you to go to your own blog while NOT signed in to Google / Blogger and click on comments to check your own blog. You keep annoying your visitors and they will stop returning.
Go ahead, try to tell us you don't care your visitors are facing this kind of crap because you don't want to check out your spam options without it when they want to tell you they're sorry your Fluffercat or Roverdog died. They not only have to love you, they have to have x-ray vision.
We just took the following off a blog comment form. We didn't make them up.
Or how about this one -
Okay, so we did a tirade anyway. Sorry about that. No, actually we're not. We're most annoyed with those who use full page comments because wv doesn't show up until after one has written a note of condolence or get well or .... and clicked "publish comment." And then we find we have just wasted our time.
Oh, and Brandi reminded us of what we forgot to include. We've checked this link several times already and our av sent a reminded this morning because if your computer is infected with the DNS Changer, your internet will be shut down on Monday.. You can find the link for various countries where you can check your computer, if you haven't already. http://www.dcwg.org/detect/ Once you read the material, it only takes one click and a second to find out.
Just a reminder that the auction for Krasota Castle will be closing soon, so be sure to stop by Furriends of the CB and check out the items up for bids.
