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[mooniac58]

30 minutes ago, Greg Ellis said:

@mooniac58 Seems like the spam is back with a vengeance at least in the general forum.

It was all from one account created Saturday.  Again, the accounts that got through that did not spam yet are going to have to be weeded out as they pop up and use them.  I don't have any way to know which accounts are bots and which are real since they use US based IP addresses and relatively normal looking account names.

[Mister_Bevilaqua]

On 8/3/2025 at 6:32 AM, midlifeflyer said:

I said this in another thread, but I’ll treat it here.

Here’s what I don’t understand. I have been in online groups since the days of AvSig on Compuserve and rec.aviation.* on Usenet. MooneySpace is one of several forums I participate in now. It is the only one that is continuously being attacked so voraciously.

bad forum software? Ineffective security settings? Luck of the draw?

I am involved in many online forums, and I have even been a moderator in a few. This is common amongst all of them, especially so with the high-end gun forums. They tend to come in waves and creep up periodically every year. Just when you think you've weeded them all out, they come up with other tactics to infiltrate once again; sadly, it's a revolving door. 

[midlifeflyer]

And today, for the first time ever, whether paid supporter or not, a popup ad on every tap. 

I like the spam better and am becoming a wee bit cynical.

[Fly Boomer]

1 hour ago, midlifeflyer said:

And today, for the first time ever, whether paid supporter or not, a popup ad on every tap. 

I like the spam better and am becoming a wee bit cynical.

Go back to page 1 of this topic and look at posts by Rick Junkin, Schllc, ta2too, etc.  They are marked as "Supporter" (I'm seeing this in my browser).  Your account is marked "Verified Member", a new designation to help tamp down spam.  If you paid at the "Supporter" level, and you are seeing adverts, then something is wrong, and you should contact @mooniac58.

[Hank]

2 hours ago, midlifeflyer said:

And today, for the first time ever, whether paid supporter or not, a popup ad on every tap. 

I like the spam better and am becoming a wee bit cynical.

Happened to me yesterday. Check your email, I had one telling me that my previous donation was 12 months ago and I needed to re-up.

The ads disappeared almost immediately!

[midlifeflyer]

56 minutes ago, Fly Boomer said:

Go back to page 1 of this topic and look at posts by Rick Junkin, Schllc, ta2too, etc.  They are marked as "Supporter" (I'm seeing this in my browser).  Your account is marked "Verified Member", a new designation to help tamp down spam.  If you paid at the "Supporter" level, and you are seeing adverts, then something is wrong, and you should contact @mooniac58.

That's not my complaint. I'm more concerned with the style of the advertising. I have been a supporter, and will likely do so again, but in the past, the advertising was less obtrusive. This kind of pop-up advertising of naked sports figures

and full screen pop up advertising when you change screens is more likely to chase people away than encourage them to contribute.

Edited August 10 by midlifeflyer

[Fly Boomer]

2 hours ago, midlifeflyer said:

more likely to chase people away than encourage them to contribute.

The timing is curious.  I wouldn't expect the tighter controls on membership to have triggered such a significant change in advertising.  Your device may have been infected by malware from somewhere else.  I wonder if others at the "Verified" level are experiencing this?  Maybe Craig @mooniac58 can weigh in.

[mooniac58]

47 minutes ago, Fly Boomer said:

The timing is curious.  I wouldn't expect the tighter controls on membership to have triggered such a significant change in advertising.  Your device may have been infected by malware from somewhere else.  I wonder if others at the "Verified" level are experiencing this?  Maybe Craig @mooniac58 can weigh in.

@midlifeflyer does not have a Supporter level account at this time which is why the ads.  Likely not malware, etc.

Nothing changed with the advertising.  I have always used Google AdSense and it is one line of code that I drop on the site and Google handles all of the ad placements.  Ads displayed are typically based on your browsing history and any other way Google can spy on you.  I am 90% certain that they are listening in on your phone mic because my wife and I or a coworker and I will have a chat about some obscure thing and within hours I see ads about that strange topic.

I actually use the site with the ads turned on just so I can keep an eye on them.  For me I see a bunch of auto parts stuff because recently I have been trying to fix up my truck to sell it:

[Jackk]

3 hours ago, midlifeflyer said:

That's not my complaint. I'm more concerned with the style of the advertising. I have been a supporter, and will likely do so again, but in the past, the advertising was less obtrusive. This kind of pop-up advertising of naked sports figures

and full screen pop up advertising when you change screens is more likely to chase people away than encourage them to contribute.

As far as adds go, I’m cool with that one 

[mooniac58]

5 hours ago, midlifeflyer said:

And today, for the first time ever, whether paid supporter or not, a popup ad on every tap. 

I like the spam better and am becoming a wee bit cynical.

You are seeing ads because you are no longer a supporter.  Your last donation was more than 12 months ago so it reverted back to a Verified Member.  If you upgrade to Supporter you won't see the ads anymore.  This is now $25 a year instead of "$10 minimum donation" as for the past 17 years.  You can upgrade now using the new system HERE.

[midlifeflyer]

44 minutes ago, Fly Boomer said:

The timing is curious.  I wouldn't expect the tighter controls on membership to have triggered such a significant change in advertising.  Your device may have been infected by malware from somewhere else.  I wonder if others at the "Verified" level are experiencing this?  Maybe Craig @mooniac58 can weigh in.

Nope. There is no malware on my computer.  And this mess appears on my PC, iPad, and Android phone.

[midlifeflyer]

3 minutes ago, mooniac58 said:

You are seeing ads because you are no longer a supporter.  Your last donation was more than 12 months ago so it reverted back to a Verified Member.  If you upgrade to Supporter you won't see the ads anymore.  This is now $25 a year instead of "$10 minimum donation" as for the past 17 years.  You can upgrade now using the new system HERE.

It's not the ads it's the type of ads and a pop-ups after every single screen. That is the kind of thing that is going to chase a new user away.

[mooniac58]

8 minutes ago, midlifeflyer said:

It's not the ads it's the type of ads and a pop-ups after every single screen. That is the kind of thing that is going to chase a new user away.

Changing the advertising is on my list of to-do's for the site but it is a lot of work I don't have time to dive into right now.  Like I said before the current system is a simple one line of code drop in for the site and the other way would be to setup an ad delivery system like Google Ad Manager and insert ad locations manually into pages.

For now, if new users cannot deal with the ads and can't pay to be a supporter then they will have to go to another site to get their Mooney community I suppose.

[Jackk]

28 minutes ago, midlifeflyer said:

It's not the ads it's the type of ads and a pop-ups after every single screen. That is the kind of thing that is going to chase a new user away.

Try Brave browser

[midlifeflyer]

42 minutes ago, Jackk said:

Try Brave browser

It's not about me. I can effectively block. And Brave for the iPad is pretty lousy.

Edited August 10 by midlifeflyer

[Jackk]

12 minutes ago, midlifeflyer said:

It's not about me. I can effectively block. And Brave for the iPad is pretty lousy.

huh, always been good to me on iPad/iphone 

 

When I hear about someone talking about too many ads on forums I always wonder “do they have a AOL email address”

[EricJ]

6 hours ago, midlifeflyer said:

That's not my complaint. I'm more concerned with the style of the advertising. I have been a supporter, and will likely do so again, but in the past, the advertising was less obtrusive. This kind of pop-up advertising of naked sports figures

and full screen pop up advertising when you change screens is more likely to chase people away than encourage them to contribute.

Thanks for posting that to make us aware of the seriousness of the matter.   Please repost any more that you get like that so that we can keep track of...this serious situation.

[MikeOH]

3 hours ago, midlifeflyer said:

That is the kind of thing that is going to chase a new user away.

Hmm, are you certain of that?

[Paul Thomas]

Next thing we'll know and we'll have a bunch a new user that you can't get rid of: tennis players.

[Pinecone]

22 hours ago, mooniac58 said:

Ads displayed are typically based on your browsing history and any other way Google can spy on you.  I am 90% certain that they are listening in on your phone mic because my wife and I or a coworker and I will have a chat about some obscure thing and within hours I see ads about that strange topic.

 

So the ads are based on what HE looked up online.  Maybe he should not have complained in public.  Or someone in his household it looking things like this up.

YES, Siri and Alexa and similar ARE listening.  That is why I have Siri turned off and no Alexa.  My GF has both and there is NO DOUBT they are listening and modifying ads you see.

[Pinecone]

18 hours ago, EricJ said:

Thanks for posting that to make us aware of the seriousness of the matter.   Please repost any more that you get like that so that we can keep track of...this serious situation.

Easy, just browse things like that and your ads will become tailored to more ads like that.

[cliffy]

I don't know about all the trouble with spam here

I've been on here for years and even now I have no spam ads showing at all

The only ads I ever saw were before I became a "supporter"

Now? I never see an ad. 

[Hank]

1 hour ago, cliffy said:

I don't know about all the trouble with spam here

I've been on here for years and even now I have no spam ads showing at all

The only ads I ever saw were before I became a "supporter"

Now? I never see an ad. 

Just wait until your 12-months expires. I always renewed when the ads appeared, but the new system let me sign up for auto-renewal so I won't see them for several years.

[wombat]

You missed out.   On several of the topic pages there were dozens if not hundreds of messages supposedly giving you the phone number to call to change your airline ticket or something like that. 

They are trying to get all of the various AI summaries to redirect people to their scam phone number instead of the real one.

Example article about this sort of thing:  https://www.zdnet.com/article/scammers-are-sneaking-into-googles-ai-summaries-to-steal-from-you-how-to-spot-them/

Edited August 20 by wombat

[cliffy]

On 8/20/2025 at 11:52 AM, Hank said:

Just wait until your 12-months expires. I always renewed when the ads appeared, but the new system let me sign up for auto-renewal so I won't see them for several years.

 

On 8/20/2025 at 11:55 AM, wombat said:

You missed out.   On several of the topic pages there were dozens if not hundreds of messages supposedly giving you the phone number to call to change your airline ticket or something like that. 

They are trying to get all of the various AI summaries to redirect people to their scam phone number instead of the real one.

Example article about this sort of thing:  https://www.zdnet.com/article/scammers-are-sneaking-into-googles-ai-summaries-to-steal-from-you-how-to-spot-them/

  As was said in the movie "My Cousin Vinny"  -  "so what's the problem?"   You want free-you watch ads (some of them bad)    You don't want ads (and want to support a good website) you pay the freight. 

So - what's the problem!  :-) :-)

 

Likewise, spam ads are really not too difficult to see. I'm careful what I open and I haven't been hit by mass spammers in a long while. Could happen sure but again I don't open things I don't recognize. Don't respond and give them a live email to sell. 

Got an email from a broker in a city I have never done business in just this week wanting to go over accounts. You think I called him on the number he emailed - hell no. I called the main office in another state to verify who he was even though he used all the right brokerage names in the email. Turns out he was working for the correct brokerage and was assigned to do the call but I verify everything on stuff like that.