Question Spam redirects: is it just me?

I was browsing the forums on my phone when I was redirected to a "Your phone may be infected!" spam page (in French). Has this happened to anybody else, or is it more likely to be something on my side?

Arcanist Lupus wrote: I was browsing the forums on my phone when I was redirected to a "Your phone may be infected!" spam page (in French). Has this happened to anybody else, or is it more likely to be something on my side?

Hasn't happened to me at all.

Well, are you in some French-speaking region (like Quebec), by chance? If so, it might be your phone company injecting ads via a proxy server. Or, if you happened to be using some sort of public wi-fi, it could be the wi-fi provider.

Being a phone, another possibility is if you happen to be be an user of those so-called accelerating proxy servers, which allegedly make your browsing faster and reduce your data usage by recompressing stuff like images to a smaller size/lower quality.

It's obnoxious, it's unethical, it might even be illegal. But it does happen.

I am in Los Angeles, so not French-speaking. And I wasn't on wi-fi at the time. And I've never heard of an accelerating proxy server, much less used one.

I'm glad nobody else experienced the same thing, though.

On another website I've had that problem but not here.

Sometimes the "you have been infected" warning is the infection, they are phishing adds trying to,get you to,install,their malware.

Never believe what a webpage tells you, the proper "warnings" are not web sites, they will be your browser refusing to display a web site.

If in doubt use proper security software purchased and installed from a reputable place (not a website scaring you that you are infected and promising to "fix" the infection). And always make sure you keep your security software up-to-date, and only download and install software from known good locations.

Phoenix Spiritus wrote: Sometimes the "you have been infected" warning is the infection, they are phishing adds trying to,get you to,install,their malware.

Never believe what a webpage tells you, the proper "warnings" are not web sites, they will be your browser refusing to display a web site.

If in doubt use proper security software purchased and installed from a reputable place (not a website scaring you that you are infected and promising to "fix" the infection). And always make sure you keep your security software up-to-date, and only download and install software from known good locations.

Oh yes. I'm not much of a computer wiz, but I know enough to ignore unsolicited infection warnings.

If you can afford it, if I remember it is $50 dollars plus a renewal fee each year, get Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. One of the best one the market, certified, and highly effective. Blocks nearly everything, with the rare fake "you have been infected" warning getting through and having to just ctrl-alt-delete to close the open window and connected tabs to stop it.

Note that Arcanist Lupus was browsing from his phone. It's harder to infect a phone with adware -- not impossible, but harder. I would consider the hypothesis that one of the ads contained some injected Javascript that led to the behavior he noticed.