EastIdahoNews.com working to banish malware and bad actors
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As many of you know, accessing EastIdahoNews.com has become somewhat problematic for some users in the past week or so.
Many of you, including a large section of users who access us through the Facebook app, are receiving full-page pop-ups showing fake virus checker programs. The malware advertisements typically show up about 30 to 45 seconds after a user clicks an article link. They prevent users from finishing the articles.
The malware is beyond annoying, and it is a problem we are diligently working to fix.
First off, let me be clear: these are scams. Your phone is not really finding viruses on our page, nor on your phone. Do not click on the links that come up!.
We suspect that this malware is coming from third-party advertising platforms, and we are working with them directly to discover who the bad actors are that have infected their advertising systems. EastIdahoNews.com partners with several third-party companies, which run sections of our website, such as our comment section.
Many of you have noted the same thing is happening on other local and state news sites, and we are told this is an industry-wide problem.
The malware appears most often from people who use the Facebook app and click on our links from that program. Far fewer people have reported problems when they are viewing our site from a mobile browser on their phone. We’ve heard from no one about this issue on desktops.
We advise that you navigate to EastIdahoNews.com directly through a mobile browser, such as Android Internet, Apple Safari or Google Chrome, until this problem is resolved.
If you can help us isolate this malware, we’d appreciate it.
If this happens to you — please take a screenshot, and email it to us at nate@eastidahonews.com. Please include the date and time you saw the malware, what type of phone you have, and what program you were using to view EastIdahoNews.com — such as the Facebook app, the EastIdahoNews.com app, or a mobile browser.
The more information we have, the better we are able to fight against bad actors using malware to torment users.
Thank you for your assistance, and we sincerely apologize for the hassle this problem is causing users.