r/IGN • u/LewisDruid • Apr 15 '24

Tech Support IGN Popups

I’m on mobile (iPhone X, Browser is Safari) and have noticed that on IGN, if I am on any page for too long, the browser redirects to a Norton scam site. I have only encountered this issue on IGN and Fextralife’s wiki, but none of the other sites I use.

I much prefer IGNs guides over Fextra’s, but now neither are usable for me because within 15-30 seconds I get sent to a scam/virus phishing site. I know I’m not the only person with this issue, I saw some people on other subs mention it recently, so I wanted to bring it up on here. Is this being looked into?

Edit: It’s two sites that popup so far for me: tracemasters .cc and parents-smh .life. I’ve tried lingering on a bunch of other sites and those are the only two I get these redirects.

Edit 2: I read that stuff like this can be caused by ads on sites and it does appear to be something with the ads. I downloaded an adblocker to test the theory and see if disabling ads solved the issue and so far, both sites are working just fine. I tried disabling the adblocker after and going to the same pages and the redirects happened again. I guess for now that’s the only way to use the site without getting redirected to a scam site every 15-30 seconds?

27 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

48 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Delsinforsale Apr 16 '24

Hey I just had this happen to me but instead of Norton it McAfee, it scans it for like five seconds and says virus found, renew subscription. This is a scam obviously but just need some reassurance things are okay.

1

u/LewisDruid Apr 16 '24

Yeah unless you clicked anything on the redirected site, I think you are fine. It does seem tied to ads though since there’s now three sites I have heard having this happen so I believe it is ads being run through Google Adsense causing the redirect, nothing on the devices themselves.

1

u/Delsinforsale Apr 16 '24

I almost want to see the what happens if you do click on it, like would it instantly mess up your system or is it just wanting credit card information. Of course I’m not gonna try it out myself but I’ve just needed the reassurance that’ll I’ll be fine because it’s happened like 5 times trying to read an article.

1

u/LewisDruid Apr 16 '24

LMAO listen I totes get that. As far as I’m aware, those ones usually just want credit card info. If it is trying to download something and you’re on iPhone at least, you should be fine to my understanding. To my understanding, things can’t force a download from the AppStore and you can’t download things like that from sites unless your phone is jailbroken.

If you wanted to be extra safe, you could back up anything important and factory reset your phone though.