Usually I wouldn't complain about ads on sites, you guys have to pay the bills somehow, but I think there are a couple of issues I've noticed on this site that are worth pointing out.
Firstly, the subscribe animated banner is..... obnoxious as hell. I'm all for trying to push the subscription (although that price is kinda insane for this site) but animations on websites is a huge no. Even worse I imagine that people who don't have accounts are seeing this which is kinda awful. You need to change it
Secondly, definitely worse, on more than one occasion when browsing on my phone I've been redirected to a gift scam website. Without clicking on anything, just straight redirect to some scummy scam website. As in literal scams, claiming to be my ISP and saying I'm the lucky 100th user just put in my personal details to get a new this or that. Has been happening for the last week or so. It's possible it's not your site but at this point your site is seeming like the most likely cause given it's happened to me several times while visiting here on multiple devices and not for any other sites. So I think you guys need to do some kind of review of the ads here
@skywake thanks for the message, we've heard a couple of people report this over the past week. Unforunately it's relatively normal to get a spike in 'bad ads' around the holidays as the scammers are trying to make the most of people being away.
We use a service called Confiant that is designed to weed out any bad ads within the ad platform that our partners at Ziff use. That should mean anything that pops up will get shut down by those guys, although it is an endless battle within the online advertising space.
Please let me know if it's still happening for you, and if so sending over a screenshot to bugs [at] nintendolife.com would be super helpful for us to pass on to them.
@skywake The obnoxious animated 'subscribe now' ads only appear (at least for me) when I've got my adblocker on - it's regular 'normal' ads if I turn it off.
Glad you are aware of it, because it's been happening for months. I have my Bitdefender extension installed on Chrome and Firefox and it blocks the ads on this site about 90% of the time I come here, with a little pop up warning from Bitdefender. And once I accidentally came to this site on Edge (which I didn't have the Bitdefender extension installed on) and then a new tab opened up with an animation of it "downloading" something and then a fake Norton pop up window saying my computer is infected and needs to be scanned. I terminated Edge and then made sure Bitdefender was installed on it too.
@mystman12 don't suppose you managed to get a screenshot did you? or can replicate the behaviour? if you can, please send to bugs [at] nintendolife.com and I can report to the ads team.
@skywake I second this. Had this happen when I was using the website on mobile. I didn't screenshot anything, but I was redirected to a false anti-virus screen along with that same exact gift site.
"It is fate. Many have tried, yet none have ever managed to escape it's flow."
I keep getting sent to fake antivirus scareware pages when clicking on Nintendo Life articles. They are nothing new here on this site, which is a huge problem all on its own--but in recent days they have become naggingly persistent.
Almost every time I tap an article, it loads, then it sends me to a phony "malware scan" website literally as I am reading (obtrusive? yep... you do want people to read your articles, right?), which always "fails" as it is designed to do. Usually it's one with a dark background but I've seen one trying to immitate McAfee using a white background too. The site always appears in my history as "tracemonitorusa.life" and when you try to go there without being taken there by Nintendo Life, you can't--go figure! Proves it's malware. 404 Not Found - nginx.
You guys really need to cut the crap with your illigitimate scam "advertising partners." Note that I have never seen this crap on a desktop computer where I use AdBlock--only on Android where such a thing is not as easily possible. Ironically, adblocking protects you from real scams by getting to the source of it all: the "advertisements" put out by the so-called advertisers themselves.
And worse, with you guys taking subscriptions to view the site ad-free, it almost seems like a pay-to-not-get-scammed ploy. Not a good look. Seriously, you need to dump your advertising partner, find one at least slightly less obnoxious...
After wiping my entire Chrome cache and doing a real malware scan, which returned absolutely nothing, it popped up yet again--right here on Nintendo Life. Took some screenshots of it in action in case they would be of any use but I can't exactly post them to this topic.
@UltraZelda64 many thanks for sending that over, very helpful!
@VoidofLight@mystman12 sounds like you are all seeing the same "fake" anti-virus advert. I've reported this to our ads partner who should be able to investigate and get it banned. This is a constant battle for them as these fake advertisers basically keep popping up through different suppliers, bit of a whack-a-mole situation. Reporting them is the best way to help us against it.
@antdickens I don't know if it'll help and there are various URLs related (but similar) that I've found, but the simplest one seems to be (and strong recommendation, do not go to the following site):
I trimmed a bit of excess garbage off the end, and that appears to be the base URL. I have also seen other, much, much longer URLs. I would say don't go there, but let's face it--people who visit this site are unknowingly and unwillingly being transferred to that page without their knowledge anyway! I will say, obviously, that if you choose to visit that page, you do it at your own risk. I don't recommend it, but it shouldn't do anything it otherwise wouldn't when being redirected by Nintendo Life's advertisers away from nintendolife.com.
Going to that exact URL will do one of three things:
1. Take you to the generic "android malware scan" fraudulent site with the dark background that asks for a few dollars at the end to "fix" the problem.
2. Take you to the McAfee-immitating scan page with a white background that tells you at the end your subscription ran out and to update it.
3. Usually, when not redirected from Nintendo Life, it will take you to some random page on walmart.com. Whether this is a legitimate Walmart-owned page or phishing, I don't know, and even if I were a Walmart online shopper, I'm not about to try to find out.
Going to the base domain, tracemonitorusa.life, simply returns an nginx 404 error as I previously stated. Of course, when being redirected from Nintendo Life you are guaranteed to get one of the two fake spyware scans, and you may get one of them when going to that URL directly as well, but it seems random. After some toying around, the first several times getting the fake scans, ever since it just keeps redirecting to walmart.com. I don't know how it is set to redirect, or if it notices my IP address through testing, or if it tries to avoid working when accessed directly.
I personally am not going to go to this web page on my main system or on my main phone. I have also submitted the domain and mentioned the above URL in a report to Google's page for reporting phishing, so hopefully soon it will be intercepted and blocked permanently before anyone can even be redirected to it.
BTW, I also sent a seccond e-mail over, this one with screens of the McAfee fake page. So you've got screens of both pages which can be served "on behalf" of Nintendo Life from that URL.
I am getting the ad that hijacks the browser and takes you to a page that says McAfee. What a malicious ad, it literally interrupts and takes people off of the site.
I have to say, advising visitors not to use ad block while having dangerous ads like this reflects poorly.
@Paddle1 thanks for making us aware... if you could send a screenshot to bugs [at] nintendolife.com that would be super helpful, so we can get that reported to our ads partner to block it.
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