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Tech help request: My blog has been hijacked. How do I fix this?
Subject:Tech help request: My blog has been hijacked. How do I fix this? From:Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net> Date:Mon, 05 Feb 2007 09:13:48 -0500
Dick Margulis wondered: <<I was alerted yesterday to a problem that
apparently has been around for quite some time, although I was
unaware of it (I wish folks had told me before). When some users
access my blog they are bombarded with popup ads. As I've never seen
these, I'm having trouble solving this... The blog is at http://
ampersandvirgule.blogspot.com/. If you do NOT see a popup when you
visit it, you probably can't help me.>>
On the contrary: the absence of evidence is sometimes very strong
evidence in its own right. Like several others who have tried your
site earlier today, I also see no popups -- either with or without my
popup blocker enabled. That means the problem almost certainly isn't
with your blog or its host.
My best guess is that your correspondents are either unlucky with
their antispyware precautions or oblivious to the need for such
precautions, and as a result, have had their computers infested with
any of the hundreds (possibly thousands) of programs in the adware
category of spyware that are floating around for Windows users. So,
in terms of troubleshooting, your first step should be to ask these
people to find out what antispyware software they're running (if any)
before assuming the problem is with your blog.
If they all claim to be running really good software and have updated
it frequently, then you need to talk to your blog's host; possibly
they've been compromised. WebRoot SpySweeper currently seems to have
the best rating; Spybot's Search and Destroy and Lavasoft's Ad-Aware
Personal edition don't rate well at all in recent tests, but they're
among the most commonly used because they're free.
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