Dangerous Ads And Malicious Popups Found On Stampsmarter

StampSmarter used to be a beautiful clean web site and a joy to use. Today I was greeted by some dangerous ads and malicious popups.

I understand the need to generate new revenue from advertising, but there are safe and unobtrusive ways to do it, and then there is this.

First there are the full screen takeover ads like this one. Never click on a button in these ads. I clicked on the X in the upper right, hopefully that is a safe way to get rid of them.



Then I tried to go to the Features sub menu of StampSmarter and I got this Captcha verification screen, which is NOT a feature of Stamp Smarter, it is an ad. And a dangerous one. Note the redirect to a macos web address which is known malware. Do NOT click "I'm not a robot" here and do NOT allow notifications.



I immediately closed the window without clicking on anything. Then I opened a new window back to StampSmarter and got some notification-like ads for fake anti-virus cures. At least they were marked "Ad", but still overly intrusive and dangerous to the uninformed.



Be warned, and tread carefully.

My system is clean, I haven't seen any of these types of ads elsewhere recently, just on StampSmarter, and I don't intend to go back and risk it, until if and when I learn they have been disabled. At minimum, the ads should be turned off for those who have donated to the Foundation.

Appropriate person alerted!

Thanks.

ZebraMan:

Thank you for this warning!

Please contact me via PM about this.

You have your email set to not receive messages through the forum.

I need additional information. I was not able to duplicate the type of pop-up ad you reported.

Thanks,
Mike L

Edit to correct typo

That's unlikely to be from the site. Far more likely to be malware on your computer. Assuming you're on a Mac based on the notifications in the screenshots, do you have a Time Machine backup?

Same thing for me with Firefox on Win11. All sorts of popups and spam, site appears unusable. I keep my browser pretty locked down and not seeing this on any other site.

WIN7 + Google Chrome -
used URL stampsmarter.com and got the following response, which did NOT appear with URL stampsmarter.org: I did "proceed to stampsmarter.com (unsafe)" without incident, and both URLs took me to the Stampsmarter website with no pop-ups either way. Maybe Don changed from .com to .org, although all my saved links to stampsmarter were as .com links.

The site is .org.

Mike, if you have't yet seen my email, CYE.

uboatnut:

Don DID change to the URL for stampstarter.org officially about two years ago. I believe it was concurrent with a change of our ISP for the website.

The redirect is there as you noted, I checked it myself this afternoon, but Don/the Foundation no longer own the registration for that original domain name.

I'm sure it would be a pain to change them, but you might want to go and make all of them point to stampsmarter.org.

MikeL

Hi Mike,
Email enabled.

Yes, I am on a Mac, using Safari browser, which is likely why the ads that I saw are targeted to be Mac-centric. A Windows user probably wouldn't see these exact ads.

Windows 10, Firefox, ThinkPad.

No malware or popups were presented.

Site, https://stampsmarter.org was not an issue. NOTE the ".ORG" and not the commercial ending.

Edit: I also have a number of protective programs loaded and operational.

If the Foundation no longer owns the registration for stampsmarter.com, is it possible for someone to have hijacked stampsmarter.com with a rogue site that looks like the real thing?

PSA – I recommend the Brave browser.

When a website gets infected with adware, the adware is usually triggered by a rogue bit of Javascript. With Brave's default security settings enabled (Shields Up), it blocks these scripts from running.

The splash page does not allow a screenshot but the text I get when searching for the commercial ending is:

Searching Google for stampsmarter.com locates a bunch of references that still use the old .com name. Curiously, some of them still show .com in the cached Google preview snippet, but clicking into the pages (for YouTube and the APS Stamps.org), the URL in the articles has been updated to stampsmarter.org -- good job Don (presumably) for reaching out and correcting the record.


There are still some news articles with the old name, like this one from Canadian Stamp News.
https://canadianstampnews.com/award...ic-resource/

Regardless, I recommend if possible that the Foundation pay the extra $15 a year or whatever it is to continue to own and operate both domains and certificates (with the .com homepage simply linking to the .org address).

I went to test Stampsmarter.org last night on my phone and was confronted with a full screen phishing scare (your computer has been hacked, click here). So something still seems to be wrong

We have investigated the issue with the malicious popups reported on this thread.

We believe we have isolated the problem and taken steps to neutralize it. Our testing shows no repeated occurrences.

However, we ask that you use better-than-normal care as you visit Stamp Smarter, and be alert to any similar behaviors. Should you see anything when you access to Stamp Smarter that does not look familiar, please make a report to me via a PM or email (if you have mine - I can't post it here) and add a post to this thread to alert others. The [CONNECT] button on the Stamp Smarter website will get to me but not quite as fast.

In your PM, please provide as much information about the nature of your experience, including type of computer and OS (Mac or PC or iPhone / Win 10, 11,I0S, etc), what browser you use, and any other software that you think might be relevant. A screen shot of the offending message or popup would also be helpful. The time of the event would also be helpful.

In an earlier post, I stated that I believed that Don had relinquished control of the old stampstarter.com domain name. After checking further, I now believe I was in error. When I confirm this is the situation, I will make sure that we continue to retain that domain.

Mike L