Scammy Ads on Mobile

Twice in the past week I've been browsing the forums on the mobile site (not logged in) and got served full screen "Congratulations, You Won a Phone!" spam masquerading as a system message that redirects to an external phishing site even when you tap "close." It was some sort of fake "Google Sweepstakes" or something like that. Didn't seem like something Giant Bomb (or CBS) would want popping up on their site. If it shows up again I'll edit this post and attach a screenshot. I was using Safari on iOS 10 if that helps at all.

Same thing has been happening to me.

@rorie could probably do something.

@strangestories: @banefirelord: Screenshots definitely help in reporting this kind of stuff! These can depend on your location so it's not guaranteed that I'll be able to see them if I test myself, but I'll see what I can do.

@rorie: Here you go!

@strangestories: cool, thanks. And what is your physical location?

@rorie: East coast US

@rorie: I haven't been able to replicate it yet, but my ads were the exact same format as @strangestories's except hocking a Google phone instead of an Amazon card. I'm also east coast US.

I'm getting these on the desktop site as well (Safari on macOS).

Just got a new phone so I wasn’t logged in and also had these ads redirect me after a few seconds of sitting on the main page. I didn’t take a screenshot but they were almost identical to the ones posted above.

I mean, I hate to be that guy to say this, but use ad block on your phone. Iphone has it built in now and firefox on android and ios support ad block. I wish companies had a better way to vet which ads appear on their sites, but until they can, I'll probably always use ad block. But I still like to support GB with my premium sub.

@coryukin: I’m sure the giant bomb folks want to know that scam ads are appearing on their website. Reporting them doesn’t hurt anyone.

@strangestories: Of course. Who wouldn't? By all means, report stuff like this. But we should also take measures to protect ourselves online.

If you remove cookies and internet data that can help I was getting those and random sites and it was super annoying I found theere were weird cookies I had on my phone and that cleared it up

Sorry for these, folks. I filed an ad disruption back when they first started, but I'll try to do that again.

Just got one of these when I opened a link in Safari (I’m logged in on Chrome, but not Safari; hence the ads):

I copied the full link if Rorie or anybody wants it.

Lmao this happened as soon as I came on to the forums 30 seconds ago. Then I picked this thread and it happened again. This has been happening for months and I have the iOS 11.2.5 beta so I thought it was just me. Guess not. This happens on every game site I visit though. Giant bomb, Polygon, Dualshockers, PlayStation Lifestyle. It has gotten out of hand. Part of me wonders it’s just safari since @Cantaloup said it happened on his Mac. Also, I’m in east coast (NYC) US also.

@awesomeusername: Sorry about that! I have multiple tickets open with the ad team about this but I don't have a huge amount of insight as to how they work over there.

@rorie: Pupdate: I downloaded chrome on my iPhone because I got annoyed by how much of this spam I was getting but it’s happening on chrome also.

Since I reported it to Rorie in another thread, I've been seeing it less on this site. The same can't be said about the other gaming sites I visit (dotabuff, ign, etc)

@rorie: I'm starting to see the ads on giantbomb again. This time, they are saying I'm getting a free walmart gift card.

@rorie@acura_max I'm also seeing them again when I'm logged out on mobile, also for Walmart. Images attached (I covered the name of my location).

I just got one of those scammy messages the moment I came to this thread. I've been having that problem with Giant Bomb, Twitter and NintendoLife.

This definitely isn't exclusive to Giant Bomb. I get it all the time on my phone from a bunch of different sites. It's terrible. The internet is awful.

Yep, sorry, I'll see if I can send another email to the ad people about these!

Personally I only have an issue when I click on a giant bomb link in twitter. If it opens in twitters browser it will be all ad and j can’t get to site. My work around is to hit the link and then hit the safari icon before the page loads. I did this here to post this.

I'm also getting stupid commercial with my iPad. Popup with just an X to close it but with a grey background that fills the page.

Also just, very painful ads allover. I'm located in Finland. The times when I'm not logged in as a premium, I just.... I'm sorry but your site looks like a mess, and I'm 99% sure you only check how your site looks without logging in every three months or so. This has been a problem for years and seems to be getting worse.

Same here, but on the whole internet over the last six months or so. Also, same solution as some above. I'm on Android, and if I use actual Chrome for Android it seems to prevent these attacks a lot more often. I have no idea how/why Google allows ads that run malicious stuff like this.

I literally can’t visit this site on mobile anymore without closing the tab and re-opening it at least once.

These shady ads have really ruined viewing gaming related websites on mobile.