I keep being forced to take surveys every time I go to FFN, and the site won't let me access its content unless I do so. Has anyone else been having this problem? And if so are there any ways around it, because the surveys are fucking retarded.

Edit. Never mind, everything is working now. Oh well, sorry about that

 

I just went on, and I didn't have to do a survey.

No idea on how to change it. Sorry.

 

No.


/snipsnip

 

Backup
Format
Reinstall
???
Profit


No joke though, you've probably got some malware. Try running malwarebytes, scanning with your AV of choice, and maybe slip in a quick look with Spybot S&D. That's all assuming you use Windows of course. You can't really 'clean' a compromised system though. You're already screwed, so I suggest booting with a linux livecd, backing up all your vital stuff to external hard drives, and then reinstalling. Once you've reinstalled, try using a more secure browser. Chrome/Opera/Firefox instead of IE. If you're using FF, install noscript, https everywhere, and adblock plus for a more secure browsing experience.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: I also went to ff.net and didn't have to fill out any surveys, meaning it's a local issue.

 

Yeah, it was an internal problem with my computer, not on the site

 

Imanut, can you please tell me what you did to fix this? I'm having the same problem, and I don't believe I've downloaded anything recently that could cause it. I have AVG antivirus (yeah, it's probably not worth shit), but it obviously hasn't caught anything...

 

AVG is shit. Install Microsoft Security Essentials at least, if you're using a free AV.

 

I'll give it a try.

 

People really are stingy when it comes to protecting their computers. I have never understood that, if you're going to splash out a couple of hundred pound on a machine, why not pay a tiny amount to properly protect it. Mind boggling stuff.

 

Because you keep it protected easily with common sense, and common sense is free.

 

I'm on another forum, the forum got hacked in the middle of the night, once everyone logged in in the morning they got infected with a virus. Don't ask me the ins and outs of it because I have no clue about that stuff. Thousands of members ended up having to wipe their computers and thus lost everything they had stored on it. A lot of them had AVG and the like. I didn't lose anything because my antivirus stopped it. How could common sense have stopped that?

 

Common sense could have told said people to back up their computers on a regular basis. I, of course, do not have common sense, and therefore have a fucking virus on my computer which somehow locks FF.net with survey content at random intervals. Now could we please turn this back to the original topic? I would like to find out what is wrong with my computer.

P.S. Microsoft Security Essentials has not done anything for me so far. A full scan has yielded nothing save a slower processor. AVG at least turned up a few warnings (injectors and such).

Edit: The surveys popping up seem to have something to do with cookies and/or my web cache. It is not web browser specific (Firefox and Internet Explorer both yield the same results). If I clear the cookies/cache and visit the DLP C2 (or any other FF story), the following link (I don't advise you to click on it) pops up: http://www.secureofferurl.com/fanfi..._5_Starred_and_Featured_Authors/84507/99/1/1/. FF.net does work if I do the quick survey, but it's still fucking annoying to know that I have a virus on my computer and shitting stuff up.

Edit2: A temporary fix (for windows) is to add this line to the hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\):

It probably doesn't get rid of the virus, but it at least disables it. I would still like to know what Imanut did to get rid of the thing though.

 

EDIT: Grimaud, I tend to run a gamut of programs and procedures I'm familiar with in safe mode, but for this and future problems it's probably easiest to get someone even more experienced to walk you through. See, for instance, http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic34773.html.

Of course you've managed to make it so that I cannot respond, since I'd need details. For fun, however, let's go over some possibilities.

Let's say that the attacker managed to gain access to the forum. Perhaps he or she found some exploit in the web server, or guessed a password, or exploited some cross site insecurity, or used an advertising service, or even god forbid was the original forum owner. He or she crafts a virus that you download onto your computer (somehow) when visiting the forum.

Up to this point, nothing has been your fault. Now, all modern, secure browsers are designed so that by default files downloaded like this are sandboxed. That is, they cannot harm anything on your local computer. Let's say that you are using a secure, updated browser. For this virus to do any damage, it would need to use a previously undiscovered and unpatched exploit. These holes do exist, but are usually quickly fixed. So you would first need to be damn unlucky to encounter this.

Even so, let's say you are this unlucky, and your attacker managed to execute the virus on your computer. For free, one can download or enable by default firewalls and virus scanners. Maybe these free options aren't as perfect as commercial options, but you would have to be even more unlucky to encounter this.

But let's say that you are the unluckiest bastard in the world, or maybe you didn't even use any free firewalls or virus scanners. At this stage, the virus you encounter needs to be so nasty that it is impossible to remove without reformatting. This virus needs to be so bad that it either immediately deletes all your data, or doesn't allow your computer to boot at all, or somehow prevents you from backing up your data. Although they may exist, I haven't encountered anything like this in all my years, so God would really have to hate your for this to happen.

Nevertheless, it's happened. At this point, you can rage. But wait, all your most important files, or things that one must never lose, should be backed up!

Oh well, in the end, common sense prevails... :facepalm

OK. I will be fair. All this requires some familiarity with computers. And to be safe maybe we should allow that most users aren't always running up to date software, and that many users are easily fooled into running viruses themselves, or that many users can't clean their own computers (what is safe mode?) But even in this case, there are so many more advantages to the above than buying antivirus software. But hey, most people don't know this either, which is why the antivirus companies are still in business.

 

I may not post much on this forum (or on any forum for that matter), but I do know better than to hijack a thread merely for the purpose of senselessly arguing about common sense (ironic, no?).

Please take it elsewhere.

 

Try running NoScript in Firefox. Takes out most surveys, popups, etc.

 

Thanks, but that's only going to solve my browser problems (not to mention I've already fixed that with a slightly more effective way). I feel like this is going a little bit deeper than that (as mentioned above, it is affecting all of my browsers despite the fact that I do not use Internet Explorer whatsoever).

 

Godfuckingdammit, I try to use Mozilla Firefox so I can customize FFN with Stylish and guess what awaits me? Chrome seems to be working fine but fuck it all to hell.

 

You could try using Combofix. It's very thorough.

Link to guide.

Link to download.

 

Fixed.

Noscript works on the principle of Everything Bad. That means no script of any kind from any website is run at all without permission. For me, ff.net means that ff.net and ONLY ff.net is given permissions.

 

Grimaud, see my edit above my previous post... it's a good idea to consult people who are used to fixing these types of problems if you want to determine the root cause. Also, I'm sorry but not every post in this thread has to be targeted at you. Seems a little egocentric of you.