It started about 4 or 5 days ago. I was reading an article here on DKOS and all of a sudden my web page was redirected to a page that looked like a McAfee Security Scan, but the URL was for a site named system-security-scan.net. I added a screen shot of it at the top of the article above. This has happened about a dozen times in the days since then. It only happens when I am on Daily Kos, and never when I am on any other site, so I assume that it has to be something on this site that it causing it. I did a Google search on that web site name, system-security-scan.net, and it appears to be a scam that tries to make you think that your computer is infected with malware, and presents a button to click on in order to do something about it. Needless to say, being a computer support engineer by trade, I haven’t clicked on the button, I just close the browser and start over. I have run my own scans, and my computer is free of any known malware that my security software knows about. One odd thing I’ve noticed is that if I go back to the same article where it just happened, it seems to happen again in a short amount of time, but if I go to a different article when I restart my browser it doesn’t seem to happen for a while again, maybe after reading several more articles.
I am not a paid member here, so I get the ads, and every so often the ads change and the page refreshes, and it seems like that is when the redirect is happening.
Has anyone else experienced this? Should I contact the Help Desk?
I may not be around all day to read and respond to your comments as I am going grocery shopping and running other errands, but I will check back as often as I can as the day progresses.
Update: Thanks to Mister E for his recommendation in the comments to switch to only connecting to Secure Sites. In Firefox it is called “HTTPS-Only Mode” and when that is turned on, when the redirect tries to happen, I am presented with a Firefox Security Warning Page saying that the site I am being redirected to is not secure, and there is a button to “Go Back” and when I click on that I go back to the article that I was reading.
