This has been constant since we moved from SmartPhoneSource.

When there is a complaint there is always a statement that this site is very much against any "active" advertising where they download spyware without your knowledge, etc. and that it will be dealt with immediately. ... It never happens ... Avenue A, Inc. is ever present here.

Can we just get an honest statement on the situation?

1) Is it the case that Avenue A is ubiquitous among advertisers and something we have to deal with for the funding?

2) How do the ads get on here? Do the forum operators actively sign up for ads in return for cash? You just go to some site and enter your forums address or include their link on your page? How does this work?

3) Is there no screening of ads (operationally)? Is it that the operators have no way to know what is going to popup in the ad boxes?

4) Isn't there any way for the site to block anything that is "push"?

5) Why is it that blocking the Avenue A installation sometimes blocks the downloading of the entire page?

I suppose I can endure clicking "Yes" whenever SpyBot Search & Destroy asks if I want to block downloading Avenue A. And even keep hitting the refresh button until the ad goes away and I can donload the page. But I really want to know what the scoop is with the site operators and policy. We have been told repeatedly that it is not condoned but I haven't seen any evidence of this.

yes, it makes a difference to me
-Quick

the ad engine is embedded in the software of the site. its java based i believe and if you prevent an ad form loading it could hang up the site as you experienced.

mikey has to pay bils which is why we have ads here. we didnt have ads at smartphonesource so that is why you never saw the avenue a stuff. (no ads, no money for the site. site was sold.. rest is history)

mikey has spoken with the ad companies in regards to this and once they find a bad sponser they will take care of them.

sometimes thuogh m faulty ads do slip thruy the cracks and that is what you are experiencing.

you direct fix is to go into spybot search and destory and turn off permanent filtering in IE. that is whats causing your issue.

you can always set your machine to auto scan your HD every night to clean itself of bad cookies and tracking cookies.

the reality is the ads do slip thru as i posted. i dont know what the ad guys do to censor which ads they carry, perhaps mikey can shed light on that.

until a solution is found, you will have to ease up on the rules in spybot, keep refreshing, or use the mobile site.

Yeah! Things have been completely clean the last couple of days. Life is good again.

-Quick

I have had to spend the last five or ten minutes--literally--tring to get in here. I'm kind of fed up with the excuses and the whining the "Mikey" has to make money or whatever. The fact and bottom line is this: NO OTHER SITE GIVES THESE PROBLEMS! Some of them are real moneymakers, not just trying to pay expenses! Even Where'sGeorge, the only other site that I have ever had this experience with no longer creates this problem. It is only this site that I have to spend extensive efforts trying to get through. I now use the mobile site, of course, and that is fine, but it's a real hassle just trying to get in and seeing I have to use the mobile site to get in which is a little less useful on the screen. Hope this isn't too harsh, but seriously this problem has gone on way too long. The bottom line is still this: HOW COME ONLY THIS SITE???????!!!!

this is certainly a dead horse.

we know its your spybot thats causing the problem...

their are sites that use avenue a which spybot deems bad for your computers health.

mike has been in contact with the vendors to remedy this situation...

although there may be someone else who suffers as you, 99% of the members dont have the problem.

short term fixces:

release the noose on the security setting on soybot

use the mobile site (which is free for you to use btw)



its not the SITE.. its the Ads on the site....




thats the bottom line. i hope I am not being too harsh but we all know what the problem is and mike is working with the vendors.

believe it or not....

No problems logging in for me and I dumped spybot since it was ineffective and feally removing the spyware to begin with. I added pest patrol and have no issues.

__________________
My PDA & SmartPhone History: Palm Vx; M505;TungstenT; NX60; iPaq 1910; I700; Treo 600; hx4700; MPx220; hw6515, Treo 700w, XV6700,, Treo 700p, Moto Q Black, Moto Q9h, BlackBerry 8310 & BlackBerry 8820, BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Storm 9530.

I hope baloney isn't too strong a word. I just checked my history. 120 plus sites. No problems. Excepet PDAPHONEHOME. So...don't tell me it's only spybot. I use it an ALL the sites I visit, that's hundreds, over a hundred this week. Why just this site? You can rant all you want about everything else but the fact is that it is ONLY THIS SITE. What you're trying to do is obscure that fact with other factors that cause it. But the bottom line is that this is the ONLY site where this is a problem...even WheresGeorge which used to be almost (but never equally) as bad somehow solved the problem. Why can't that be done here?

It is probably true that 90% have no problem. Are the other 10% unimportant? Fine, can accept that. How about this: how many people are turned away (or turn away) because YOU CAN'T GET IN??!!?!?!?!???

I don't have any problem with this site, I run AdAware and Spyware XTerminator and they both come up with spyware, but nothing that says Avenue A or anything that came from this site.
Don't know why you are the only one with this problem?

__________________
SteveM
Sprint PPC 6700
w/ WM6

Nobody said I am.

Guys, I'm very sorry that some of you are having problems. I do the best I can. Its a free site and we are all working here part time. I have 4 kids, a day job, a couple of side jobs, church, school volunteering, etc, etc... and sometimes I like to see my wife. As you'll note, its 4:43am and I just spent an hour answering questions to people that would like help figuring out what device to buy.

I kind of resent the fact that people think we are trying to hide something with the ads. We are not. I work with several ad networks, and we also have some direct advertisers. The way the ad networks operate, it is definitely possible for bad ads to "slip through the cracks". When you work with an ad network, you agree to let them sell space in a spot on your site. They do this based on the type of site that it is, the demographics, etc.... just like TV networks sell advertising for a program. Because they work with many web publishers, they can get better server big advertisers that want to cover a large number of sites with a campaign. In the profile, you specify what you do NOT want to have on your site. I can assure you that I have ALL of the profiles set to the most limited choices available... no popups, no popunders, no spyware, etc, etc... even though anyone of those would pay about 10x the income that not having them pays. With each ad network, and we primarily work with three most of the time, there are dozens of new campaigns starting very day. The profile automatically bans a large number of the campaigns. But, I could go through manually multiple times a day and test each ad and then ban it if it caused problems. Even if I did that, in many cases the advertisers can change the ad during the campaign, or disguise it via a javascript approach that calls something that can be changed. I have spent countless hours working with the ad networks to try and make sure we don't get this stuff. Advertisers do actively deceive the networks. Some of them will even use a fake company name, or keep changing the name the operate under... and you know who the biggest offender there is I would suspect. There are also a range of ad networks out ther, and the ones we are using are the hardest to get accepted by, and the most conservative. I've stopped working with several that we had to use when we first started, because there were too many bad ads coming through. At this point, we are giving up a lot of income by just not doing anything with those available ad impressions... because its not worth the hassle it causes our members. It is up to you whether you believe what I'm telling you or not, but what I've described is exactly the way it works.

I personally have rarely come here and had a problem with spyware. I can't fix what I can't reproduce. 95% of the time, when a bad ad is reported... and that means pointing out which ad it is (including the one at the very bottom of the page which can often be the offender)... I personally go to the ad network and ban the ad. In almost every case it has been a campaign that just started.

Sorry for my rant, but its late and I'm cranky. In the case of mdavis, I am truely frustrated that we can't figure out what is causing your problems. It seems odd that this is the only site doing it. I seriously doubt its the ads, because the networks we used are used all over the place... and I've got the most restrictive profile available from them. So, unless you are going to some oddball sites (no offense intended), then it must be something else wrong with our site that is causing the problems.

__________________
Mike - Been Converged?

Or just switch to Firefox, no active x, no problems.

Just add pdaphonehome.com to your restricted sites in internet explorer, and don't allow active x and you should be safe.

The fact of the matter is it sounds like you have way to many blockers running and probably a corrupt cache in one of them.

It might be time to switch browsers and see if your problems disappear.

There is nothing wrong with this site and its ads. When there is something that slips, everyone does there best to eliminate that bad ad, but overall it is all good.

You know, when I doctor tells you have only 3 days left to live, and after the 3 days, you go back and he tells you 3 more days, and then again 3 days later he keeps telling you the same thing, it might be time for a second opinion. The other doctor tells you to make the most out of life because we don't really know when the end is.

__________________
Patrick Stuart | Art Instruction Schools

excellent points to both of you.

I don't now what you mean by blockers but all I have running is spybot. I have no idea which ads, if any, are causing it but the fact remains this is the ONLY site that is a problem. I am frankly amazed. I do see the little popups it puts up in whatever is my last window. Sometimes it is Ave. A. But today, when it took me about ten minutes to get in here, it was DoubleClick, or something like that. Probably if I usd a different browser it wouldn't happen. I use IE even though I despite Microsoft because it is easier for a lot of other reasons, and Netscape is just too much of a bother many times.

Once in a while I get a little cranky also, especially after it takes 30 minutes or so to get in here (that's no exaggeration). Of course I might not be frustrated if it had always been like that--but several years ago when I first joined this place it never happened, so here I am stuck liking a forum it is almost impossible to get into (for me). And add to that the fact that it doesn't happen elsewhere (okay I won't mention that again, for at least 24 hrs.) and you guys who are a little techie inclined can understand why that kind of inconsistency could drive one mad.

If I thought a corrupt cache did it I would immediately empty it out or erase it but I don't know enough about that to know where to go.

man im telling you its soybot hands down! its not the site thats ths problem.... its the ads! spybot doesnt like them so it keeps you from getting in..

IF ... IF you do what i posted a while back you would not have the problem. you have a permanent blocker set up in spybot that is causing you from proceeding.. only when the next ads rotate is when you are able to get in.

we are not keeping you from have a good experience on the site... we WANT you to access the site without problems. we tell you this and you seem to think we are lying or covering something up. why would we do that? mike just told you again what the issues are and what he has been doing.

if you want to help then LOWER your shields (star trek! ). if you are so nervous that some spyware wil get on your pc then run spybot after you leave here or overnight..

sure.. sure.. you have children and that could never happen.. well when do you get a chance to search your pc for wares then???

if you change that attribute you wont have any more problems...

its as simple as that.. either change that or keep refreshing... vikes had some good ideas also so try those... firefox is free so try it....

I don't want to be argumentative or cranky but your advice is misplaced--if I were having problems elsewhere, if I couldn't search everywhere whenever I want with no problem, then a system alteration would be called for. But the range and number of sites I visit is incredibly large and the number of sites is infinitisemally small: ONE!!! No, I'm sure what you say might help, even cure it, but since this is a unique problem, it is no the real root of the problem. You also don't address why other sites don't have the problem (what are they doing that's not done here, or what is done here that no one else does) nor more importantly if all that is necessary, then there must be others who are having this problem, either silently suffer or...hmmm....go to TreoCentral, etc. etc., for a hassle-free experience. And of course you will have tons of satisfied users attesting to that. How many just don't enter?

Actually I think instead of all this effort directed at why I don't want to change Spybot settings, it should be directed at why these settings don't cause a problem elsewhere. Sincerely I'd love to know. Wouldn't you?


The bottom line is this site should act like all other sites. It doesn't. Maybe my set up isn't the preferred set up. The bottom line remains: this site is the only one. I'm not happy to report that believe me. But I'm not going to allow all that other crap on my computer and I'm not switching browsers. IE actually stinks, abominably, I know. But I know the problems inherent in new apps.

I use spybot as well. I have it set so it puts up a dialog box listing the offensive item with a yes/no button. I have never had a problem getting in. Sometimes it is on the first page but that one loads for the most part. Most often it is in the forum section or on the way to the Kyocera 7135 forum. It (at least for the past year or so) is *always* Avenue A, Inc. Often the page does not load. I wait a bit and hit refresh. Seems that the ads stay for around 15 seconds. Fortunately it seems to be *very* rare that there are 2 in a row.

I just wanted to know how it worked and what the scoop was. I suspected it was something like described -- you sell space to a broker who runs their client's ads through it. I'm happy knowing that the profile is set to "no" on these sorts of things and I understand how some ad brokers are less vigilant than others and that the ad purveyors are much less so.

I can live with it.

mdavis,

Are you running XP SP2? The security/blockers on SP2 have been beefed up and on by default. Have you noticed a small bar come up just above the content window? They will put a notice up there telling you what is currently being blocked when it happens and you can click on that to temporarily allow. I think I have medium levels set for IE and I don't get this on this site. I only experience spybot blocking Avenue A. on this site.

So, thanks for the explanation Convergent, that's mainly what I was after. It's a free site. My only contribution is my posts (mostly well intentioned). I'm re-assured that you're doing the right thing (actually, just not doing the wrong thing is good enough). I appreciate your and the staff's efforts running the site.

-Quick

I can offer this info. I checked my Pest Patrol Cookie Patrol and there is not one Avenue A or PDAPhoneHome cookie tagged as a privacy issue or has been deleted. I visit this site several times a day along with many other sites. I put Pest Patrol my household netowork severral months ago. Why because Adaware adn Spybot while FREE do not find everything that is a security risk, Pest Patrol did.

I also moved to Firefox 1.0 and I have virtually no issues compared to IE6 and I get more info on my screen than IE6.

So I suggest give Pest Patrol a shot and try Firefox its free.

Thanks.

__________________
My PDA & SmartPhone History: Palm Vx; M505;TungstenT; NX60; iPaq 1910; I700; Treo 600; hx4700; MPx220; hw6515, Treo 700w, XV6700,, Treo 700p, Moto Q Black, Moto Q9h, BlackBerry 8310 & BlackBerry 8820, BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Storm 9530.

davis, have you just turned off spybot and relied on . say, adaware just for a few days to see what kind of results you get?

we can go on and on but if there are people who can get in here then its not the site.. its your pc thats causing the issue..
i know i sound like a broken record and i think im not going to post anymore on this since i am tired of saying the same thing over and over to no avail...

please try the other options offered to you......................................................................................