An Appology

[cydermaster]

I recieved a PM, from a Mod, this morning; concerning the link I posted to the car being pulled out of the docks, yesterday. It was pointed out to me (very politely and friendly, as you would expect) that the page linked to contained adverts for the 'seedier' side of t'internet, and the mods had been inundated with complaints about it from other members and their parents. The Mods had made the decision to pull the thread. The Mod's decision/action was the right one, in this situation; and I must applaude them for the polite way this has been tackled.

Please accept my appologies for this. :humble: I had no idea I was going to offend so many people. I'm normally against censorship, but the sort of ads the 'dark-side' uses, are another matter.

In my defence; I run Mozilla Firefox, as my browser, which has an integrated pop-up/'rude advert' filter. This filter had done its job, and had blocked all the dodgy stuff from my screen; therefore I had no idea I was posting a page containing 'iffy' links.

If you want to stop all this rubbish, concerning the 'other' side, being flung at yourself, from t'internet - its worth trying out Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

 

[Stymye]

It's nearly impossible to use the internet without something offensive popping up now and than.

 

[rbeckey]

I guess I had my internal filters on, because I don't even recall seeing any links or ads on the page.

 

[Stones]

Their are plenty of "pop up/addblockers" nowadays so that you can keep your browsing "clean". Most firewalls have them and their are addons to IE like Avant Browser , which is freeware.

 

[rstaff3]

I noticed nothing odd when I looked at the link, but do have ads blocked. Not that I have a doubt that something rude was there. Still, giving an appology is a commendable thing

 

[Hospital_Rocket]

Dan

I think part of what went awry was, and I use Firefox so the popups did not bother me, was the links at the top of the page made for very easy access to unsavory sites. Just for the record, I tried it to see what "free" ment so I could see if I felt it appropriate to drop a note to you, then the mods. My firewall lit up like a christmas tree. I had to log off, purge DNS, reste my router, lease a new IP address, wow....

I admire your willingness to accept ownership of a mistake. An increasingly rare trait in this day and age. I'm proud to consider you one of ours.

A

 

[GL-P]

No harm done. I never saw the thread.

I have firefox as well and in some ways unfortuneatly is has a really really good popup blocker.

Hopefully you won't get too much grief.

Thanks for apologizing tho it wasn't exactly you fault.

For me at least, no harm done.

 

[hokkyokusei]

Originally posted by Hospital_Rocket

I admire your willingness to accept ownership of a mistake. An increasingly rare trait in this day and age. I'm proud to consider you one of ours.

He's a _Great_ Briton
Not average, not OK, but Great....

 

[arthur dent]

I've just downloaded and started using firefox,seems like its got lots of advantages .I think its very hard to use the net without at least seeing doorways into the darkside and anything that can help keep my system free from pesky pop ups etc is a good thing.

 

[arthur dent]

Howcome i can set up a new E-mail account and start receiving spam before i have even given my new adress to any one aaaggh..

 

[DynaSoar]

Originally posted by arthur dent
Howcome i can set up a new E-mail account and start receiving spam before i have even given my new adress to any one aaaggh..

Four ways:

1. Your provider is giving it out, either directly, or indirectly because someone's gotten through their security. If this is happening either way, they won't admit it unless forced to.

2. You're infected with an address book reading trojan. When you start a new address, it sends the spammer a note. Infection detector software will work as long as the infection is a known one. A similar problem is if your configuration is insecure and someone has gotten through it. Not actually an infection, but the same result.

3. The spammers have been attacking your provider with alphabet attacks and as soon as a new account is turned on, they get a new hit. AOL gets billions of spams per year, but gets tens of thousands of dictionary attack attempts per second.

4. If you choose a username that was previously used and valid and had been spammed, it'd still be on many spammers' address lists. If your provider had been trying to minimize alpha attacks by throttling down response time to them, the spammers software accepts that time lag as a valid response and had been "collecting" invalid addresses as valid way before you picked it.

"What we need are a few good old fashioned hangings." -- FTC Commissioner Orson Swindell, at the FTC Spam Conference, March 2003.