Annoying ads - Adchoices?

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
37,358
8,010
136
Out of curiosity I searched for heart rate monitors at Amazon a few days ago. Today I am on a completely independent page, investigating notepad ++, http://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/notepad-6.2.2-release.html and on the right side pops up big obtrusive Amazon ads, oddly two identical ones hawking one of those heart rate monitors and beneath them one hawking an Amazon Kindle Fire. There's a little triangle at the bottom right of the first two that says Adchoices when I hover my mouse cursor over it. How do I get rid of this stuff? What is it really? Is this produced by malware? I never used to get that stuff. I'm using Firefox 17.x.
 

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
37,358
8,010
136
Ah, clicking on it I get here:
Your Current Advertising Preference: Personalize Ads from Amazon

What are personalized ads? Personalized ads, sometimes referred to as targeted or interest-based ads, are based on information about you, such as the products you view on Amazon.com, your purchases on Amazon.com, visits to websites where we provide ads or content, or use of payment services like Checkout by Amazon on other websites. You can set your preference for ads personalized by Amazon here, or visit our Interest-Based-Ads page to learn more.
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So, I can opt out of it and will! No personalized ads for me!
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I close and go back to the page and a couple of other ads pop up, I bite and wind up configuring my "behavioral advertizing" for Google, turning off everything. Get bizarre messages about my internet connection being slow, can't turn them all off, and I manually turn off the rest. Never seen this stuff before. The page is http://www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/your-ad-choices
 
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KeithP

Diamond Member
Jun 15, 2000
5,659
198
106
I went to that page if your first post and I didn't get any ads. You may want to scan your system for malware if you haven't already.

-Keith
 

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
37,358
8,010
136
I went to that page if your first post and I didn't get any ads. You may want to scan your system for malware if you haven't already.

-Keith

I'm still getting that Adchoices shit at that page. I downloaded and installed and ran (in order) today Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool (it found nothing!) and Malwarebytes trial version. Ran a full scan with Malwarebytes and it found 2 items, one of which it said was trying to do something malicious. I quarantined both items. Then I came here, launched that site and I still get the annoying ads. WTF. :confused: o_O

I was running adblock plus on my firefox installations, maybe I'm not on this one. Will check that out. Maybe if I set that up that shit will disappear.
 
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Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
37,358
8,010
136
I was running adblock plus on my firefox installations, maybe I'm not on this one. Will check that out. Maybe if I set that up that shit will disappear.

Aha! I just installed Adblock Plus, the latest version with the EasyList filters and hit that site and I see no ads. Should have thought of that before. I have 3 computers I use a lot. This one I had to start over from scratch a few months ago and I forgot Firefox add-ons.