155 replies to this topic

[Greg Wolfe]

Flagged as spammer; post deleted. Thx!

du Garbandier, on 27 April 2010 - 04:17 AM, said:

harpreet kaur

[Peter T Chattaway]

Don't know if this is "spam", technically, but...

Lately I have found that, often, when I use Google instead of the A&F search engine (just to make sure that the term I'm searching for isn't one of the terms that A&F ignores), clicking on the A&F link provided by Google takes me *not* to A&F but, instead, to a link like this <http://url4short.info/f108fd7c>. But if I go back to the Google search results and then click on the link to A&F again, I get through to A&F all right.

Does anyone here know why this might be happening? And is it happening to anyone else, or just me?

[Ryan H.]

Peter T Chattaway, on 05 January 2013 - 04:00 PM, said:

Don't know if this is "spam", technically, but...

Lately I have found that, often, when I use Google instead of the A&F search engine (just to make sure that the term I'm searching for isn't one of the terms that A&F ignores), clicking on the A&F link provided by Google takes me *not* to A&F but, instead, to a link like this <http://url4short.info/f108fd7c>. But if I go back to the Google search results and then click on the link to A&F again, I get through to A&F all right.

Does anyone here know why this might be happening? And is it happening to anyone else, or just me?

It's also been happening to me. And I have no idea why.

Edited by Ryan H., 05 January 2013 - 09:48 PM.

[John Drew]

Yep, happened to me last weekend as well.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Oh, it also happens to me when I click on an A&F link in Google Reader. (New threads -- or threads that haven't been updated since the software upgrade in late 2009 -- pop up in my news feed.)

So, it's apparently affecting both the Google search engine and the Google reader. But I haven't had this problem with anything *else* that I connect to via Google. So I don't know if this is a Google thing or an A&F thing or something unique to the overlap between the two.

[opus]

OK, I was able to replicate this once. url4short.info is a URL shortener service a la bit.ly or goo.gl -- or at least, it was. Apparently it has been shut down (ironically enough, due to spam), meaning that any short URLs created with it are no longer valid. Which would explain the odd error page that pops up.

However, as to why those url4short.info links existed in the first place, I have no idea. I've done some digging through the site settings, as well as some additional Google searches to see if anyone has encountered this problem with the board software, but so far, no luck.

If you encounter this issue any more, could you make note of what link/topic you were attempting to access?

[Rushmore]

A couple times it's happened to me on a link to the A&F index page--but coming from Bing, not Google.

[Nathan Douglas]

For the last week or so, this has happened to me every time I use the Google search method on the first try of a given session. I'm on a Macbook using Safari. The url4short page comes up, but after I navigate away (getting the stern dialogue box Making Really Certain), a second window pops up advertising "MacCleaner" and exhorting me to keep my Mac clean. After getting away from that, I can click through to the thread I wanted from the Google results page.

[Ryan H.]

I just got it again while using Google to search A&F for "dead zone" and attempting to access the following link:

http://www.google.co...357700187,d.dmQ

[Tyler]

I've gotten the same thing several times in the last week or so. I just tried searching "Tree of Life" with the A&F site search (on a MacBook using Firefox), and it happened again. The URL I was redirected to is: http://url4short.info/f108fd7c.When I click back or close the tab, I get the "are you sure? data you have entered on this page may be lost" warning.

Edited by Tyler, 13 January 2013 - 09:17 AM.

[Anna J]

Apparently this is an IPB problem that should be solved with a recent patch. I've requested the upgrade and will let you know when it's done--please let me know after that if you're still getting the same url4short thing.

Thanks!

[SDG]

I am still getting that damn url4short.info link bug. And they're making it harder and harder to get away once you land there.

Note: I typically hit it via Google search of Arts & Faith. The next time I repeat the Google search, I get the right URL.

[opus]

FWIW, there is a patch but it requires upgrading the site to the new version of the forum software. Working on it...

[forogsmserver]

solution
http://url4short.info/3e2b941a
what they have to do is remove the default Skin
deletes Languages
and back up another skin and language
cache / lang_cache


exploit this infected
cache / lang_cache
Skin defect
redirected http://url4short.info/3e2b941a

here you can test if it is infected

http://wepawet.iseclab.org/index.php

sorry for my Inglés

[Darryl A. Armstrong]

Hey. Now this is meta!

[Tyler]

Did we ever figure out the Short URL redirect issue? It still happens the same way for me.