Website ISN'T Hacked – But Readers Are Being Redirected Off My Blog

  • Chocolate-Covered Katie

    (@chocolate-covered-katie)


    8 years, 6 months ago

    Starting a few days ago, people began complaining that when they use an iphone and click any post on my homepage (chocolatecoveredkatie.com) they are redirected to a spam website telling them they won a prize. It’s only for some people, and only on wifi.

    A site malware scan and sucuri say my site is NOT hacked. And when I turn off advertisements, the redirects stop. But no matter what ad network I turn on (even if it’s just adsense), the redirects come back. My main ad network says it isn’t them because they are running ads on many other sites and I’m the only one with the redirects. They say something in my site is hijacking the ads. (I’ve cleared W3 Total Cache multiple times and have tested all other plugins – Also, I did not make any changes to the site in the days before the issue came up.)

    Sorry for the ridiculously long post. I have read through the forums and all the articles I can find on google, and I can’t seem to find anyone having this issue. My host company says they can’t replicate the issue and therefore can’t help. (Currently, I have ads turned off on mobile while trying to figure out a solution – I’d rather lose revenue than readers.) If anyone has any ideas of what might be going on, I would be grateful beyond words.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    I can’t reproduce the problem on my iphone or with my desktop set to use the user agent for Safari on iPhone. Its entirely possible your ad network is serving you bad adds.

    Thread Starter Chocolate-Covered Katie

    (@chocolate-covered-katie)

    Hi, as mentioned, I have mobile ads turned off completely right now, so no one will be able to replicate the problem at the moment. Sorry for the confusion.

    Also as mentioned, my ad network is serving ads on many other sites and mine is the only one with the issue. Also, even if I only have adsense running, the redirects happen. It’s so strange!

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    I don’t think you have a WordPress problem. See if you find this useful:
    https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/adsense/szfNNkPrkLI

    Thread Starter Chocolate-Covered Katie

    (@chocolate-covered-katie)

    Thank you very much. That does seem to be relevant to what I’m experiencing. I will go read through that thread now and hopefully I can figure it out from there. Thanks ??

    Thread Starter Chocolate-Covered Katie

    (@chocolate-covered-katie)

    Read through the link. Unfortunately, if this was an adsense issue then everybody would be having this problem. The linked article is talking about a problem from Jan and Feb 2015 that impacted the entire internet. Everybody was getting redirects and it was definitely an ad problem. The issue I’m dealing with is only happening on my site so it can’t be an internet-wide issue.

    If this isn’t something that I should ask here on the wordpress forums, please feel free to take this topic down. I definitely don’t mean to ask something that isn’t relevant. No matter what, thank you for having replied.

    And when I turn off advertisements, the redirects stop….

    That is the core of the issue. If those are Adsense Ads, you need to ask in the Adsense forums. If another ad network, ask them.

    Thread Starter Chocolate-Covered Katie

    (@chocolate-covered-katie)

    Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter what ad network is running. No matter what network is running, the redirects still happen. So it’s not a specific network.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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