adaware for macintosh?

[Bella]

a friend of mine expressed concern about the cleanliness of my ibook because, when i visit his website, i see a google ad at the top of the page. he said that i must be infected and should looked into wiping the slate clean. problem being, he has little to no experience with macintoshes.

sooo (ari?) - anyone know of a nice program that can sweep my computer and tell me if i've a problem? i'd prefer not to have to download this program, but if i must, then i will. freeware is always appreciated, shareware is OK too.

or is it possible that my friend is on crack?

[freemonkey]

I found this site (http://www.unwantedlinks.com/macsupport.htm) on Mac security. I don't know much about it though, since I rarely use my Mac(s) on line.

[username]

a friend of mine expressed concern about the cleanliness of my ibook because, when i visit his website, i see a google ad at the top of the page. he said that i must be infected and should looked into wiping the slate clean. problem being, he has little to no experience with macintoshes.


I am not a mac person, but if it seems appropriate to you to post the URL of the site where you see the google ad, we can take a peak with our various browsers, OSes and such and report whether we see it or not. If all of us do that would at least indicate it isn't a problem with your machine.

[Ari]

Seeing the site would be good.
There are no mal-adware on the Mac as far as I know. However there are cookies that can do evil things like minor tracking, or bringing up popups or possibly even ads on a page.

[Bella]

DanceArt.com (http://www.danceart.com/shoutout) - you'll have to click on "Apprentice Entry" and then go to the first message board in the drop-down menu at the top, titled "ATTN: DanceArt." When I open that board, I see a google ad at the top of the right-hand frame. David, the administrator, says there should not be an ad.

I didn't think that there was any bad ad crap floating around for Macs out there, but since I lead a very sheltered Internet life, I hardly pay attention.

[Ari]

I think you need to tell the Admin to double check his code.
I see the ad too (when I turn off my ad blocker) the page source agrees with me,

"<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-3055541095988794";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = "468x60_as";
google_ad_channel ="4125719412";
google_ad_type = "text_image";
google_page_url = document.location;
google_color_border = "336699";
google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";
google_color_link = "0000FF";
google_color_url = "008000";
google_color_text = "000000";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script></div>"

[username]

I most definitely see a google ad there with IE. I will post a screenshot in a minute

[username]

Since Ari already posted the goods, I will skip the screenshot, but the point is the page displays google ads.

[username]

Well, since I had the screeny already, why waste it? :D

[Ari]

A screen shot from a windows machine is just further proof it isn't some sort of super secret Mac malware. :)

[Bella]

Thank you very much. I've forwarded the information to David :)

I'm going to continue to use good Internet-surfing habits and assume that I'm safe from various virii and other unwanted inhabitants.