That's what I'm thinking auntjen, if we all agree to never open them they become useless for GW and the advertizers. I wonder if the ad com. know that GW is placing there ads this way and will see our reaction/rejection?
Internet is the only green word for me in this thread, what do you see, so we can figure out if the trigger is word specific or our browsing history in GW?

I don't know how adware works, but this isn't happening to me on any other site that I frequent. I believe GW has instituted the links.

Bodica, I'm only seeing "internet" in this thread as well. Over on the conversations side, however, some of those threads are just full of links, and I'm even getting stupid popups in some of those threads as well.

Bad idea, GW.

And another thing...in the last week or two, I've noticed that some of the identical items I've been looking at on Overstock have been showing up on ads to the right of the posts on GW.

Today my computer is running slower even though I have high speed internet. Can these links that started today be causing it?

Egads, when I just previewed my post, "high speed internet" caused another link to pop up.

I'm so glad to see this thread. This happened to me this morning too, and I had no idea why cabinets was double underlined and in green. I don't want my posts linking to ads!

This is annoying!!....and glad to know that I am not the only one it is happening to....hate it!!!!

Tell you what ... let's make this thread our "petition" to GW. If you find the links offensive and want GW to stop them, please post here and say so. Let's keep this bumped up to the top, where it will hopefully get noticed by the powers-that-be.

There are so many areas in my life where I feel I'm constantly spammed. This used to be a relatively spam-free zone, and that's one of the reasons it's always been such a pleasure to come here.

I at least feel better that it isn't just me! I re-did my post 3 times this morning thinking that I had picked up a bug and was passing it along! My post has one of these links in it too!

Did anyone email the moderator? There is one right?

I agree with Auntjen, I've been checking out other non-GW sites and this is only happening here on the GW forums.

Yes, let's make this a Petition to Remove The Very Annoying Links thread.
I'll bet the powers-that-be are already monitoring this forum for our reaction to this.

GW: please keep your ads to the sides like you have been doing all along. If we want to click on them, we can. Heck, just last week I clicked on the CoverGirl Simply Ageless make up, read about it, went to the store and bought it. Please treat us like valued participants, not mindless animals!

My take on the new PIA links:
~ CHEAP
~ INVASIVE
~ SPAM
~ OUR PRIVACY IS BEING VIOLATED
~ TACKY
~ VERY BOTHERSOME!
~ IRRITATING TO THE EXTREME!

Lynn

I get lots of spam from this site, and our privacy isn't violated as there is no privacy. We're at the mercy of iVillage/NBC and if they're going to sell ads, they'll do it.

I think the forum users would be better served by GW offering incentives, promotions, etc. from manufactures (Apartment Therapy does this, as do several fashion forums), but then that would require some actual effort.

I'm still not seeing it. It must be adware in your browser. Probably nothing the Admins can do about it.
Get a better anti-adware program.
Casey

try these links:

firefox

adblock

hth, Lena

Nothing the admins can do about it? Baloney.

I agree with Aunt Jen . . . this would be happening on other non-GW forums and blogs if we had some virus. Buying into Firefox may screen these links from you seeing them, but it IS GardenWeb who's added them in the first place. I'd bet my last dollar that it's them.
Lynn

Without the advertising GW (IVillage) does not thrive as we do not pay dues to belong. They make money from the advertising, so when a subject comes up, any advertising related to that can attach itself. If you do not want that then you need the right browser or AdAware to block adware.

If that's the logic, then I guess I'm SOL, as I'm using a computer at work and I can't simply download stuff to try to make annoying ads go away.

(Oh good ... it's linking to "computer.")

I am in agreement with most of the posts above. I realize that they need to make money on this site (and if you want to know more about "money", I can see that you can click that embedded link in my post), but it seems that they have *plenty* of advertising here (many of which slow down page-loading on this site).

Admin can very likely do something about it (and it may have originated with Admin). If any of you have used Gmail (google mail), you probably have already seen this type of advertising. There was some controversy on how Gmail would "search" each email for keywords and then ads relating to those words would pop up at the same time. This isn't a new thing...and I'm not fond of it.

Jen, I have the same problem, but I'm thinking that since these are work computers, they probably have high dollar blocking systems. My computer crashed yesterday due to a virus...yikes! I wonder if iVillage is to blame???
Where is Tamara...she is right around here if she wants something, but pays no attention to the things that bother us!! Wake up iVillage and clean up your act!!
Thanks Lynnie for starting this thread!

Right, Jaybird -- I know our network here at work has all sorts of security measures designed to keep out unwanted garbage!

I understand GW needing ads, and don't mind the few I see( I have Foxfire that prevents most of the bad ones), but these are just too much...ridiculously too much. Hope they go away pronto!

Well, I had them too and now they have disappeared!

This is most irritating, I first saw it late last night in one of my posts. I am here to say to the PTB to get rid of it ASAP.

Mine are gone, also. :)

I'm so glad this was posted. It happened to me on my home PC this morning and I have Firefox. I closed out the browser and logged in several times and it was still there. I'm at work right now and can not see it.

GW, you need to get rid of the links or I'm outta here!!

Thank goodness, they've disappeared! What a nasty shock that was this morning, to come on site and be faced with that. You couldn't even post a reply without the popup interfering. I wonder if they had massive fallout from gardenweb members and quickly changed their minds about this truly idiotic idea. I'm so relieved it's gone.

Hmm, mine disappeared too! I fell for the first one and I just had smoke blowing out my ears and nose! Should we still start a petition?

If they come back...I found an explanation for an easy way to get rid of them.

When you hover over the link, click on the "?" and when the ad pops up, there will be another place to click "disable".

That will get rid of all of them.

Hi everyone --

Tamara is out tending to some family business today, so I apologize for not getting over here sooner. I wanted to let you know that these links were rolled out on the forums unintentionally and have since been removed. We apologize for the confusion this caused.

Thanks for your comments and for your patience.

Caryn
Caryn D. Stein
Director of Community, iVillage.com

Caryn, thank you for the quick response and I'm glad the links are gone.

Thank you Caryn!

Thanks, Caryn! Glad to see them gone. I did 3 scans and 3 system restores late last night thinking that it was something that I picked up on the net, even though I tend to avoid questionable sites.

Yes, my thanks and appreciation too.

Many thanks for your help!

I was actually afraid to post! :)

Jan

Yes, thank you, Caryn! What a relief that they're gone!
:-)

THANK YOU!!

Here's some info I found about these 'ads'.
They are called "Hover Ads".
From further reading, I found these ads are very easy to add to web pages.

My Apologies to everyone here!

Had I bothered to read the entire thread I would have seen Caryn explained it all.

That'll teach me to read the entire thread before responding!

Caryn, thanks so much!

Caryn, thank you.
I'd have checked out immediately and permanently, had you not taken care of this.
And thank you, fellow posters, for being all over it. I saw them, too, but am such a techno-dolt that I didn't have the first idea what they were.

caryndubelko, why does your profile say:

----

I live in: United States My zone is: VA

My birthday is on July 4.

My favorite forum 1 is Gardening with Kids.

My favorite forum 2 is Bonsai.

First registered on April 19, 2005.

--------

No mention of being a Garden Web "Director" in your profile. Nothing in your screen name to indicate you are one of the higher ups at iVillage AKA "Caryn Stein".

How does something like this happen "unintentionally". There is a lot of progamming to a website to install something like this.

What are you getting at, Dilly? I'm pretty sure Caryn is who she claims to be ...

Perhaps we should give Caryn a break on this. Sometimes ideas are tried that don't pan out and our vociferous objections must have been embarrassing to those involved. Let's just be glad the problem was taken care of extremely quickly, which heaven knows is not always the case.

The important thing is that the links are history. :-)

Dilly makes a good point. I was also wondering how this could have happened "unintentionally."

Just checked gwtamara's info and it is similar to caryn's (including registration date) except the first line strangely says "yourself."

Interesting . . . well, whether it was intentional or an accident, I am glad GW listened to us and took off those annoying links. Thanks, Tamara!
Lynn

bigdoglover, I had previously compared the two profiles and there was nothing similar between the two.

-----

yourself

I live in: United States

My birthday is on March 2.

First registered on November 15, 2005.

---------

I'm glad the programming is gone. I had posted something yesterday, and the green linky was in it and I freaked out. I thought GW would blame me that *I* put the linky in the post. I thought some virus had invaded my computer and all my posts had links in them sending people to porn sites or mortgage refinancing places.

I do know that a lot of blogs have that system in them to make money, but I had never seen it done on a mainstream site before.

GardenWeb has tried embedded ads before.

See response in this forum: OK Gardening forum August 2005

Same furor resulted.

I am about to drowse out from benadryl (darned allergies), so pardon me for being lazy; I'm simply to give you a link to a discussion where I wrote about this 2 years ago in March on the Cottage Garden forum: (because you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same)

The NEW, Improved Super Host File, plain text version, is now 597kb,and can be found HERE, but read the old discussion first so you know what to do with it.

You're welcome. ;^)

Here is a link that might be useful: Better living with Super Host File

Updating the host file not only stops pop up ads, but it's also effective against other interesting things that might unintentionally be rolled out sometime because it blocks the source. (no hover ads here)

Dilly, I was a paid moderator for AOL and my profile didnt' reflect that in any way what so ever. I don't think that's terribly uncommon amongst websites.