Please stop STW fro...
 

  You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more

[Closed] Please stop STW from trying to kill my laptop!

20 Posts
13 Users
0 Reactions
47 Views
Posts: 2004
Full Member
Topic starter
 

I browse many websites a day. Too many actually - I should be doing other things but that's not the issue. The issue is that out of all the websites I visit, this website is the only one that is trying to kill my laptop.

i generally browse with media player running in the background and a couple of Excel spreadsheets open. Browser typically has three tabs open. Everything is fine until I try to access STW.

Doesn't matter what browser I use, the laptop grinds to a crawl. 15 seconds later the laptop fan kicks in and blows out enough heat to warm a small apartment.

With Firefox I get the (not responding) message. With IE I get the "long running script" message. Chrome doesn't say anything - just sits there counting sheep.

I tried using Firefox with Adblocker installed. It told me that it was blocking 18 ads every time I tried to open STW. I know sites need advertising revenue to survive, but 18 ads in the first 20 secs, at the cost of the site actually opening properly?

I have a decent anti virus program running and I've checked for Malware. Nothing found, and as I said, other websites work fine even with media player and Excel running.

are the hamsters not being fed properly or what?


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 6:21 pm
Posts: 77347
Free Member
 

I have a decent anti virus program running

... which is?


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 6:30 pm
Posts: 2004
Full Member
Topic starter
 

ESET Nod 32.


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 6:49 pm
Posts: 45504
Free Member
 

We use eset at work. It's ok, but can be rather over keen at times and seems to run checks a lot...


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 7:05 pm
Posts: 2004
Full Member
Topic starter
 

Yeah mine scans often, when I plug in a HDD and occasionally when I'm browsing. I don't think it's the culprit though.


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 7:10 pm
Posts: 77347
Free Member
 

There's worse AV than ESET.  I think I'd still be tempted to uninstall it temporarily just to rule it out though.


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 7:12 pm
 ajaj
Posts: 0
Full Member
 

Something on STW is intermittently very nasty. I presume it's a programmatic delivered Ad script, STW don't do any filtering and are cheap enough - or at least occasionally cheap enough - for the malware distributors to use.


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 7:20 pm
Posts: 11605
Free Member
 

29 ads here. Honestly, who needs to put 29 ads into a single page impression?

That's not the point though, something is causing serious load loops intermittently. The page is loading but something in the background isn't resolving.


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 7:25 pm
Posts: 7954
Full Member
 

Buy a p and ads go away. Problem solved 🙂


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 7:25 pm
Posts: 2004
Full Member
Topic starter
 

29 ads?  STW is putting the FB Clickbait pages to shame!


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 7:40 pm
Posts: 33325
Full Member
 

29 ads here. Honestly, who needs to put 29 ads into a single page impression?

Odd, I’m only seeing one, for Crystal Ski Holidays across the bottom of the page below the comments box.
I don’t see any on the main page.
As anyone can see, I don’t have a ‘P’, and I don’t use any specific ad-blocker either, I just don’t use Google as my search engine in Safari.


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 10:22 pm
Posts: 16
Free Member
 

17 on chrome


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 10:33 pm
 xora
Posts: 950
Full Member
 

Just examined the logs and a good proportion of those "ads" are actually the tracking scipts not actually adverts. So STW is also selling your browsing habbits!


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 10:40 pm
Posts: 0
Free Member
 

At least my Google pixel phone hasn't got a "40% damaged battery" requiring me to download dubious apps off Google play. That seems to have stopped for a while. I await it's return.


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 11:30 pm
Posts: 77347
Free Member
 

STW is also selling your browsing habbits!

No they aren't.


 
Posted : 08/02/2018 11:33 pm
Posts: 2004
Full Member
Topic starter
 

Since everything works on the Laptop except the STW website I think I'll leave it as it is and use my iPad to come on here when I need to.


 
Posted : 09/02/2018 8:27 pm
Posts: 71
Free Member
 

I find the post update site eye-waterigly slow. Doesn’t impact other stuff particularly, but puts me right off using it, and I’ve got a P, so not adverts.


 
Posted : 09/02/2018 8:43 pm
Posts: 77347
Free Member
 

It's slow at the moment and will be for the next couple of days as they're doing Stuff behind the scenes which is killing the server.  This too will pass, short-term pain for long-term gain.


 
Posted : 09/02/2018 8:52 pm
 sbob
Posts: 0
Free Member
 

So have they sorted out the indexing to work with inserting ads into people's posts?

That was the problem wasn't it?

Just a lucky guess...


 
Posted : 10/02/2018 2:22 am
 ajaj
Posts: 0
Full Member
 

There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that STW are selling browsing habits. The site runs Sortable, and Sortable's privacy policy says that they may share browsing habits with advertising networks.


 
Posted : 11/02/2018 10:59 pm
Posts: 3007
Full Member
 

While not nice, I bet a lot of sites do the same


 
Posted : 12/02/2018 7:52 am

6 DAYS LEFT
We are currently at 95% of our target!