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Amazon giveaway popups on Safari/Chrome browsers!
- Thread starter Johnny365
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This has been going on for quite some time. Several of my employees had this happen over and over again, but only at two locations and on their iPhones and laptops - at two coffee shops owned by the same person.
I got to the bottom of it - infected routers at those two locations. The lazy dumba..., er, affected employees were using wifi and not the portable hotspots I gave them to use. It seems it was happening to a lot of their customers. I got the browser histories/cookies/caches cleared, notified the coffee shop owner of the likely issue (they were "infected" with malware), and asked my guys to be more cautious - no more popups...
Even if you're not on wifi, once its gotten in you'll keep seeing it until you're clearing out the histories/cookies/caches it'll persist. It's been awhile since I've used Chrome on iOS, but AFAIK Safari, Chrome, and a bunch of other apps (like Feedly apps) dump cookies into Safari's cache, so it might not matter which app you're using...
I got to the bottom of it - infected routers at those two locations. The lazy dumba..., er, affected employees were using wifi and not the portable hotspots I gave them to use. It seems it was happening to a lot of their customers. I got the browser histories/cookies/caches cleared, notified the coffee shop owner of the likely issue (they were "infected" with malware), and asked my guys to be more cautious - no more popups...
Even if you're not on wifi, once its gotten in you'll keep seeing it until you're clearing out the histories/cookies/caches it'll persist. It's been awhile since I've used Chrome on iOS, but AFAIK Safari, Chrome, and a bunch of other apps (like Feedly apps) dump cookies into Safari's cache, so it might not matter which app you're using...
There could be sooooo many things happening, and yes, one could be an infected router.
More common things: CDN that a website uses to push ads has been compromised (we see that from time to time on Macrumors).
Downloaded an ad blocker that gets some of their revenue from the same ad spammers, so, might try a different ad blocker.
The ISP might be injecting ads into the stream from a compromised CDN. To partially remedy that, switch your DNS to Cloudflare or IBM (1.1.1.1 or 9.9.9.9).
Clear your website data to flush anything stuck in the cache.
For the record, using 1Blocker and am not seeing any of the "you've won" spam. Then again, this is about the only discussion board I go on, and all the websites I do visit are not using some of the sketchier CDNs out there and or are well administrated to avoid scam ads.
ADD: here's an old, on-going thread regarding this. And to be fair, if you go through the thread, will see that big time sites like BBC, ESPN, etc. are not immune to their CDNs getting compromised.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/congratulations-amazon-user.2100402/
More common things: CDN that a website uses to push ads has been compromised (we see that from time to time on Macrumors).
Downloaded an ad blocker that gets some of their revenue from the same ad spammers, so, might try a different ad blocker.
The ISP might be injecting ads into the stream from a compromised CDN. To partially remedy that, switch your DNS to Cloudflare or IBM (1.1.1.1 or 9.9.9.9).
Clear your website data to flush anything stuck in the cache.
For the record, using 1Blocker and am not seeing any of the "you've won" spam. Then again, this is about the only discussion board I go on, and all the websites I do visit are not using some of the sketchier CDNs out there and or are well administrated to avoid scam ads.
ADD: here's an old, on-going thread regarding this. And to be fair, if you go through the thread, will see that big time sites like BBC, ESPN, etc. are not immune to their CDNs getting compromised.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/congratulations-amazon-user.2100402/
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Had to peel away for awhile, family's in town... I'm going to pile on with NoBoMac's bit as there's some pretty clever hackers out there, agreeing with all of those offerings. The only means that I'm aware of to put a fix to web browsing is to either not use a web browser or to disable JavaScript, with the caveat that one of the first setting changes I make to all iOS devices and all laptops is to disable the "Auto Join" option. I even have to be careful with my MHS units - all of them available to me now use some form of Android, and I never leave them "on" and/or set the timeout to around 5-10 minutes.
I've been using Synology routers - specifically the RT2600ac - in my home office and newer field offices. They're not the fastest, but they're "niche" in that IMHO there aren't enough deployed to make it worth the time of a hacker, and its intrusion prevention package is pretty slick.
Another benefit that I don't take advantage of are the public wifi options from the wireless and wired providers I pay for - I just don't install those profiles...
I've been using Synology routers - specifically the RT2600ac - in my home office and newer field offices. They're not the fastest, but they're "niche" in that IMHO there aren't enough deployed to make it worth the time of a hacker, and its intrusion prevention package is pretty slick.
Another benefit that I don't take advantage of are the public wifi options from the wireless and wired providers I pay for - I just don't install those profiles...
There have been a lot of complaints about this issue especially with that Amazon redirect. I had never seen or been aware of this until my wife started complaining about seeing this every time she went to TheHill.com news site. It seems to be an ad on some sites that redirect your browser to another page with that ad, in this case Amazon. It’s not actually a pop up, the browser is being redirected sometimes using the back button will get your back to the site you wanted in the first place. You should also report this to the site if it’s one you use frequently. They are not usually aware of this since it’s the since it’s the ad placement service that is causing this. Clearing all your history and web site data will work temporarily but as soon as you revisit that web site it starts again.
I had never seen this since I’ve used an adblocker for years. Once we installed an ad blocker on my wife’s devices she hasn’t seen this again. We use 1Blocker X on our iOS devices and I use Wipr on my Mac. Wipr is simpler to use but doesn’t give you a native way to white list a site, the developer doesn’t believe in doing this. 1Blocker X does
I had never seen this since I’ve used an adblocker for years. Once we installed an ad blocker on my wife’s devices she hasn’t seen this again. We use 1Blocker X on our iOS devices and I use Wipr on my Mac. Wipr is simpler to use but doesn’t give you a native way to white list a site, the developer doesn’t believe in doing this. 1Blocker X does