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General discussion

Weirdness??? I Went To Adv. Search & Faced

Aug 14, 2008 3:39PM PDT

a 2 1/2 X 2 1/2 inch square box "to get the plug-in"!! What plug-in & why? No identification of what plug-in was for & it's location blocked parts of the entry boxes.

Has some nasty found it's way on to the site again/ or a left over malware plug-in from a few weeks ago?? Not seen Here before & completely un-expected. T.I.A. for wisdom dispensed! Sandy Confused Grin

Discussion is locked

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Odd...
Aug 15, 2008 3:40AM PDT

Was this part of the webpage or a pop-up window? And which browser? I didn't see it myself but the engineers have been tweaking the site for the past few days, with random bugs of all kinds, so it's hard to tell what might have happened, or might happen.

John

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Hi, John! It Appeared To Be...
Aug 15, 2008 4:03PM PDT

overlaying the basic page at about 2 o'clock on the page taking 1/6th of the page? I seemed to be there as soon as the page displayed fully rather that popping up 30 seconds later.

Running latest Sea Monkey w/ Sun Java 1.4.2 latest. Sea Monkey has it's pop-up blocker enabled although cookie permissions for Cnet (broad w/ remember me ticked) may have allowed such from within the cookie grouping ?

Not getting it since first time. Just many malware type sites have the same generic "get the plug-in" box ready to download trouble. Couldn't figure why I'd need such as Cnet displays fine for me normally.

Thanks for replying!! Grin

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In The Last 2 Minutes, I Went...
Aug 17, 2008 4:18PM PDT

to the XP Forum from S.V.&S forum (both normal not beta) and got the same "on top box" for "get the plug-in". Definitely NOT a delayed pop-up but laid over items displayed on page obscuring same. Same location as before. Hmmmmmmmmmm.....S Confused

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Upon Leaving Above Post, Went To
Aug 17, 2008 4:21PM PDT

XP forum again via left hand links & no plug-in box showing. Happy

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Went 2Post Reply 2 A Question....
Aug 17, 2008 4:35PM PDT

& box appeared on reply page. Correction: Box is 4"X4" I measured!
Getting annoying!! S

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Can you snag a screenshot of it?
Aug 18, 2008 2:21AM PDT

If nothing else, you can press PrintScreen and then paste it into Paint, Word, etc. to save the image. I'm more than curious to identify it, but haven't encountered it myself.

John

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Thanks For Follow-up! I Have Program...
Aug 18, 2008 4:19PM PDT

called "Purrint" which allows capture of whole page or imposed box only. Can be saved as bmp, gif, png, or jpg. From: http://apps.bcheck.net/ Purrint. I will try to snag next time it appears. Do you have preference for box only or whole page view? If .jpg, how can I upload to you? Thanks, Sandy. Grin

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ImageShack.us is a good site...
Aug 19, 2008 4:06AM PDT

-> I use SnagIt, a commercial application, and recommend Gadwin PrintScreen as one of the best freebies...never tried Purrint, though. (Website currently unavailable or I would check it out.)

-> I prefer entire screen, sans the start bar, so the titles of any dialog boxes or pop-ups are included as well.

-> I generally upload images to either my own site or my free PhotoBucket account (letting you modify/replace/remove the file at will), but ImageShack.us is a good free site to upload too without having to register.

John

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Hi, John! Finally Got Pop-Up & Got It
Aug 21, 2008 3:26PM PDT

as .jpeg. Had some dificulties getting to work on Imageshack (eventually had to register but they still don't recognise name & password.Sigh!).
Anyway I got screen shot up there & this is their link for forums.
Despite re-sizing larger than standard, seems very small to me. Just C & P'd here. Hope it works OK for you. Sandy Grin

http://img45.imageshack.us/img45/4764/cnetpopupzd5.th.jpg

Just as a side note: Coming here tonight to post this, each page I went to was "new style" & at Advanced search & V&S pages Log-in took e-mail but wouldn't let me type in password. Just to take input from keyboard.
Luckily, reaching this forum, it did take password so I got to post this. Confused

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Sorry, I Just tTied to Enlarge Pic Myself
Aug 21, 2008 3:37PM PDT

and seems to only get fuzzier. Perhaps hopeless unless you can clean a poor image.

Normally Purrint shows pretty clear when I print but...Sandy Shocked

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a tip for using Imageshack
Aug 21, 2008 6:44PM PDT
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Hi, Jonah! Nice To Hear From You! Thanks...
Aug 22, 2008 2:51PM PDT

for that very useful tip!! Grin

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Interesting...
Aug 22, 2008 2:28AM PDT

It looks like one of the 'floating ad' or 'floating survey requests' that Cnet routinely uses. Since I see the banner ad in the background I doubt it's Flash, but since the universal login wasn't working for you either it could be a Javascript issue. (Either on Cnet's end or yours.) I assume it's fully-enabled and NoScript (and similar extensions) are not enabled? In the mean time I will if I can get it to happen here.

Anyone else encountering this?
John

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Glad You Could Make Head/or Tail...
Aug 22, 2008 2:56PM PDT

it!! The only blocker I have running on Sea Monkey is their pop-up stopper. Don't have No-Script on board. All Flash disabled. Possibly
Spybot's Immunize having such an effect(in SM)? Haven't seen this elsewhere.
Thanks for following the thread! Sandy Grin

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I finally saw it...
Aug 27, 2008 2:22AM PDT

It's a third-party survey that is supposed to slide in from the left side of the screen shortly after loading the page. I was on another computer and didn't have the ability to check out what specific plug-ins/settings are needed, but it's not Flash-based and the same one is being used by CNN as well.

John

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Just a thought
Aug 27, 2008 5:32AM PDT

John I had a thought when I read your, "I finally saw it" post.

You mentioned CNN.

Isn't CNN one of the many web sites where this Antivirus XP 2008 originated from? I'm sure I have read that somewhere, probably a CNET or ZDNET newsletter.

If so, could this mean that CNET is attempting to display a similar fake Flash plugin?

Mark

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Doubtful...
Aug 27, 2008 5:55AM PDT

The Antivirus 2008 issue was with two banner ads a particular company (which I will decline to name here) gave to Cnet and was later discovered to have been modified to create an automatic redirect to the rogue websites. I know PC Magazine was also affected, as were all of Cnet's affiliate websites, but I do not recall CNN specifically being named. (May have been included in the 'affiliates' category.)

In this case it appears to be entirely legitimate, and done by a group Cnet, CNN, and others have used before. (They've been annoying, but seemingly trustworthy.) And there actually is content being displayed, asking for feedback. But as luck would have it I have only been able to get the survey request to appear on workstations I have little control over and no way of looking into what is required for it to work properly.

John