Not sure how much you can do about this, but there's an advertiser putting banner ads on the site that impersonate the style to fool people into thinking they're actual GDNet links:
Worse still, if you click on one of those links, they've pirated the GDNet header on the site that the links take you to:
I saw that too. I know we've had to put some new ad networks in place so I'm trying to figure out which one it belongs to. I don't like that they are taking our header to make it look like a gamedev.net page.
I saw it early this evening, and in an effort to capture more details, discovered it is somewhat defensive to identification.
When I opened Chrome's developer tools chrome stuttered and the add unloaded itself, then the page reloaded.
Hoping to capture it again in progress, I kept the Chrome debugging window open and browsed the site this evening as normal. I noticed one time the page loaded the ad for an instant then immediately reloaded without the ad, and it also reset Chrome's debug console! I have flash turned off and several script limiters so it is probably html5 driven.
Whoever is running the ad knows full well that they are up to no good, are evading anti-script tools, and are trying to evade capture in debugging tools.
When I opened Chrome's developer tools chrome stuttered and the add unloaded itself, then the page reloaded.
Wow, that's pretty impressive crazy.
It shows up with a media net link when picking the ad options button, if that helps.I saw that too. I know we've had to put some new ad networks in place so I'm trying to figure out which one it belongs to. I don't like that they are taking our header to make it look like a gamedev.net page.
The same ad is back - I'm seeing it in multiple threads.
One of the button redirect links:
Depending on the link, the url paths are different, but they all seem to be 637501985.keywordblocks.com, with the number being constant for every ad I'm currently seeing. (Presumably it changes whenever the ads are blocked, or maybe the number is just a timestamp) Actually, it's the same number prefix used in frob's link three days ago.
Amusingly the button links are context-sensitive to what's on the page. In this thread, we're talking about, among other things, lockpicking minigames in RPGs. So three of the buttons read: [Lockpicking] [Keyless locks] [Emergency locksmith]
Whereas, in this thread we're talking about ads, so it displays:
[Banner advertising] [Banner design] [Pay-per-click] [Website promotion] [Online advertising] [Free targeted]
That would explain why the actual content displayed on the buttons is often cut off. Eg on the APIs and Tools forum page the first item should read "Game Development Courses", but the Courses part is omitted.
Amusingly the button links are context-sensitive to what's on the page
Indeed, can't believe I've actually missed that.
Wow, they went to great lengths!
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