ActiveX Controls?

[Quichon]

Okay, I've got Norton Internet Protection 2006. This gives me a number of defenses, one of which just triggered while getting onto your website which I wanted to inform you of in case it was something you didn't want on there...

As I loaded the main page, an ActiveX Control tried to install itself onto my computer, which I denied. When the page downloaded, there was a blank spot where an add banner looks like it probaby should have been up by the top center to top right of the main page.

This happened again on the EQTC Forum main page.

It did *NOT* happen when I hit 'Post New Thread', which was interesting. Also, no blank white spot on the top of the page while posting here.

Did you get hit by Spamware or something or is my newly updated internet protection just being a PITA?

This is the first time this has ever happened to me on your website.

EDIT: After I finished posting, the error popped up and said the website which the ActiveX control came from was

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pag...

[KyrosKrane]

Do you have Macromedia Flash installed? It looks like Google was trying to load some sort of ActiveX object, which usually means a Flash ad. In very rare cases, nefarious advertisers slip some sort of evil doo-hickey into their ActiveX ads and try to distribute them through Google's ads, but Google usually catches on to them VERY quickly and bans the ads and the advertiser.

Nothing on the EQTraders site uses ActiveX. You can safely deny any such requests on the EQTraders site and the rest of the site will work just fine.

[Ngreth Thergn]

What Kyros Said.

We don't have tons of control over the google ads (some, but not tons, I can block some domains)

It may have just been flash. (There is a shopzilla ad that is currently under heavy rotation that looks like it may be flash)

But google is reasonably reputable about not letting really bad stuff in

And there are not ads on every page so I expect it was the shopzilla ad since there are no ads at all on the post/reply page

[Rinikku]

ARG... I hate Flash Ads

Boo... why did google let a flash ad in? I hate those. My comp is really slow and flash ads, just make it go even slower. I even switched to gmail to get away from hotmail and yahoo flash ads. I thought google only did text ads or non-moving ads.

[Quichon]

Not necessarily innocent.

I know Yahoo has a deal with Doubleclick, a major information gathering/Spyware company who produces fairly accurate data about net surfing activities because everyone who goes onto the Yahoo main website is hit with a small Spyware program called Doubleclick which monitors your net browsing and keeps a list of all websites you browse, and sends it back to Doubleclick for processing. Fortunately, AdAware is able to remove it, so I run AdAware after hitting any Yahoo sites.

The same things can be downloaded along with the ActiveX controls to run a flash ad without the user being aware of it.