Guh... wha?

[Rubyfree]

I'm suddenly getting a flood of spam sites in pop up windows whenever I reply to a new thread, including one called "smartpak radio". I am certified virus and spyware free over here.... what gives? Running a mac with OSX 10.5.8 and Safari or Firefox, both updated. It's happening with both browsers.

ETA: The main site that I'm being redirected to is www.searchignited.com; this is the one that's labeled 'smartpak radio'. It's just one of those generic search/spam sites.

[HighFlyinBey++]

There are many others who are also having this problem. They're getting a split second of COTH before being redirected to SmartPak radio. They cannot post so I'm doing it for them.

I'm having no problems at all. I'm using Vista and the latest Firefox. I am not a premium member.

[Rubyfree]

Yup, I'm now getting it even when I just load the main forum. I am able to use my back button to get into the forums and to post.
Me thinks we've been hacked.

[HighFlyinBey++]

Are you, by chance, running the AdBlocker Plus add-on? I have it to block noisy & animated ads--so far I'm good. *crosses fingers*

[Rubyfree]

I am not; pop up blockers have done the trick for me until now. I only got the pop ups once though- I'm now just being constantly redirected to the searchigniteplus site.
Hope we get a fix soon. Very irritating.
BAD spammers, BAD. *whack*

[okggo]

I am getting the same redirect from my home computer. Have vista with norton360. Ran a scan, nothing found. Spam blocker is on. I wondered if it was coth that was attacked or my computer, but as it is working ok from here I assume it is mine.. What is the fix? It is only the coth forums
, Otherwise computer is working fine.

[Green Acres]

Finally I can get my morning dose of COTH. I was re-directed to Smartpakradio too when trying to get on the forum. Maybe now that I got here, it's fixed....?

I emailed COTH asking if there was a problem. I got a response saying there is a problem with the URL and they are working on it. THANKS COTH for the quick reply!!!!

[furlong47]

smartpakradio is the site that serves the smartpak banner ad at the top of every page... perhaps that was the site that was having the problem. Whatever pop-ups you were getting would then be actually coming from the smartpak ad and not from COTH itself

[HighFlyinBey++]

Thanks for the update, GreenAcres. I've passed it along!

[Donnie Steele]

On behalf of SmartPak, I'd like to apologize to all of the loyal Chronicle Forums readers. As furlong47 rightfully pointed out, the site that everyone was being redirected to was actually to the SmartPak Advertising Server we use to sponsor the boards. When the ad server failed it somehow managed to redirect everyone to the server instead of simply not showing an ad. We have since *permanently* corrected that issue and sincerely apologize for blocking access to the best horse forum around.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding, and more importantly being loyal supporters of the Chronicle Forum!

Donnie Steele

Director, New Media
SmartPak - Smarter Horse and Dog Care

[Rubyfree]

Thanks so much for the quick fix and the reply Donnie!

[HighFlyinBey++]

Originally Posted by Rubyfree

Thanks so much for the quick fix and the reply Donnie!

Ditto that

[Moderator 1]

Thanks for the explanation, Donnie, and to everyone for their patience!

The moderation staff has also been unable to get online until now, which is why alerts haven't been addressed yet. Off to do some housekeeping.

Thanks again for everyone's understanding!
Mod 1

[frugalannie]

Thanks to Smartpak for their quick response. One of the things we love about you guys! Great products and equally good customer service (in which basket I put your actions and posting today).

And thanks to COTH for keeping it going.

[Renn/aissance]

Posting this on behalf of another member. Though the issue was said to be resolved three hours ago, she is still experiencing the redirect problem. She has tried Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, cleared her cookies in both browsers, refreshed the page... all the normal usual suspects. I contacted the mods, but if anyone has any suggestions for her in the meantime, that would be appreciated.

[Donnie Steele]

Again, thank you all for your patience and kind words while we worked through the outtage.

Renn/aissance in the hopes of providing some clarity for your friend the nature of the of the server outage was actually a domain name server (DNS) issue, which makes it a rolling problem. When there's a DNS issue it requires visitors to wait until their internet service provider (ISP) has updated the technical DNS. This is why some visitors never experienced an outage today, as their ISP never updated their DNS in the first place. Others were quick to be reconnected, others less so. The long short for your friend is they needn't worrying about clearing their cache or trying a different browser, the issue will be automatically corrected by her ISP today.

[TrueGrit]

Originally Posted by Renn/aissance

Posting this on behalf of another member. Though the issue was said to be resolved three hours ago, she is still experiencing the redirect problem. She has tried Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, cleared her cookies in both browsers, refreshed the page... all the normal usual suspects. I contacted the mods, but if anyone has any suggestions for her in the meantime, that would be appreciated.

I dont use Mozilla anymore, but try clearing "Temporary Internet Flies" In IE:

Tools> Internet Options> Browsing History> "Delete" button> Temporary Internet Files> "Delete Files" button> "Yes" to Delete Files pop-up > Close > OK to exit.

Close Browser, reopen. If that doesn't work, close browser, shut down/restart. If that still doesn't work a ScanDisk with Defrag (or without - I like to do both at once) should get rid of any file stragglers. When the popup window for deleting temporary internet files comes up be sure it's selected.

hope this helps. COTH withdrawal sucks.

[Defying Logic]

A friend of mine is still having issues with this, is that to be expected or is there something else going on?

[twofatponies]

Thanks for the explanation! I thought it was quite mysterious, too!

[ErinBush]

Thank you, everyone, for your patience yesterday. Donnie, thank you for addressing the community and for keeping them posted -- I just got back on myself this morning!

As always, I really appreciate how pro-active you all are in letting us know when there is an issue in our forums.

Have a great day!