Cleaning up a customer's PC, I made the mistake of leaving a tab open on Yahoo's home page. Only 1 minute later: malvertized. Sunuva...
I did it again to pin down the cause, & indeed it's Yahoo's ads breaking out, taking over the page, & loading scary messages that make it difficult to leave.
I can't stress enough, folks, that an ad blocker is Internet SECURITY software.
Unlike the simple on-off switch built into some browsers, NoScript & ScriptSafe are selective & granular JavaScript blockers. That means, with either of them, you can allow JavaScript from a website's domains while blocking & distrusting JavaScript from ad network domains. And that distrust of an ad network's JavaScript (or any domain's JS) follows you across the World Wide Web to every website attempting to use it on you, not just the one site you distrusted it on.
@arielmt I used to joke around about that years ago when ad blockers became vogue but I had no idea how true it would be. I would argue it's even more effective than antivirus when it comes to casually browsing the internet.
@Saxxon And you would be right. The majority of Web-borne malware gets its foot in the door via ad networks.
@arielmt I have one user at work who uses Yahoo, most of the rest are on Gmail. There's a marked difference as far as how often I need to troubleshoot slowness issues for that one workstation, and Gmail isn't exactly light. So thanks for the reminder, I will be checking the adblock on his terminal tomorrow.
@arielmt What do you do about anti-adblocks like Admiral popping up?
@Tathar For that, I usually recommend the more extreme action of blocking JavaScript on that website, either through "Site Settings" behind the info icon in the Chrome address bar, or through an extension such as NoScript for Firefox & ScriptSafe for Chrome/Chromium.
If the page content is completely inaccessible with both ads & JS blocked, then there's nothing for it; I recommend abandoning the site. Like a game of Three-Card Monte in an alley, the only winning move is not to play.
@arielmt I've been increasingly horrified at the pages where I've seen this happen. Major newspapers etc. Yahoo is a whole other level though.
For anti-adblock pop-ups, I usually recommend the more extreme action of blocking JavaScript on that website, either through "Site Settings" behind the info icon in the Chrome address bar, or through an extension such as NoScript for Firefox & ScriptSafe for Chrome/Chromium.
If the page content is completely inaccessible with both ads & JS blocked, then there's nothing for it; I recommend abandoning the site. Like a game of Three-Card Monte in an alley, the only winning move is not to play.