Can't use "back" button because of "view.atdmt.com"

[sbp]

You've got some sort of marketing tracking redirect installed in the background that messes up using basic navigation. Every so often, I'll try to just go back a page, and my history view in IE shows an endless string of "view.atdmt.com" url's. Only way out is to refresh. Very annoying.

[NE_Elaine]

more screen shots - seems more persistent than before

[meshane]

Very helpful screen shots NE_Elaine. Thanks so much.

- Shane

[MCulver1980]

After much research, I've found the quickest resolution to this issue to be refreshing the page (or hitting the F5 button). Once you refresh, you should see that the view.atdmt.com entries in the history are removed.

[sbp]

Well, since the refresh solution is in my OP, I may have been able to save you the time!

[NE_Elaine]

You are welcome - let me know if I can provide any additional information.

[NE_Elaine]

OH NO - it's back.

Attached are screen shots...

Between 3 and 4, I skipp a bunch of posts as there were no adds.

Screen shot 5 shows the contents of the back button when I hover over it.

[meshane]

I have some good news to report. Sorry to change directions again on the suspected cause, but as I said this is a complex issue and there have been a number of people looking into this since early July. Ultimately, it comes down to some ads exposing a bug in Internet Explorer. We were able to track the cause of this down to a 3rd party ad network, and found a particular ad that was causing this. We have now blocked this ad, but we do suspect that more than one ad is causing this behavior which is part of why it's been hard to track down. We will continue to try to root out the cause of the problem and remove any ads which trigger the bug. If you encounter this again, please continue to let us know, and screen captures of ALL the ads on the page at the time are always helpful.

I know that ads can be an annoyance but they are what keeps chowhound's doors open. We will continue to do our best to keep disruptive ads from reaching the chowhound community.

- Shane

[Veggo]

Most of us don't mind the ads, we just want to navigate nimbly. Thanks for the attention. It sounds like ads are like first dates you have to check for STD's.

[pine time]

Thanks--nice to have back buttoning again!

[NonnieMuss]

Mmmm nope. Still happening. I can't get my screen shot thingie to work. Anyone else? Count me as one who doesn't mind/understands the need for the ads, but when they take over completely, install cookies, trackers, or wreck the back button, then I start having issues with them.

[Harters]

I've been away for the best part of a fortnight. Whatever has gone on in that time seems to have corrected the problem for me.

[NE_Elaine]

I think this problem might be resolved. I don't know if chow did something or if it was a recent Microsoft update that I ran last night, but I just spent about 15 min on the boards and didn't have the problem once.

YAY!

[Veggo]

Same for me.

[sbp]

Well, CH admin folks, if you DID do something, please let us know, and let us know what was done. Always good to know how to fix a problem.

PS: It could be that CH did nothing, but Windows did an automatic patch of the OS.

[Veggo]

Also, CH admin folks, if you did something that caused the problem in the first place, we would like to know. Yesterday was so bad I would be a CH dropout if that were the new normal.

[NonnieMuss]

Now I am getting the same issue with googleads again, as well as something called apr.lijit.com. Same steps to block in internet options as I mentioned above, but this is getting really irritating. While it did happen on some other sites, it happens pretty constantly here.

Site blocks: http://apr.lijit.com and http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net

[pine time]

Still happening to me, too, on IE, saying ad.doubeclick.net. Very frustrating.

[Veggo]

If this is all about CH shoving countless ads up our rectums, they need to know that scheme can backfire.

[NonnieMuss]

Try adding http://ad.doubleclick.net to your restricted sites. Sometimew you have to play with the site name to get it to work. Wish they'd just block these ads entirely.

[estufarian]

I'm not sure if I have this same problem, but a variation - or whether a new instance - but it seems similar.

Again Explorer (64 bit)

This problem ONLY occurs on Chowhound tabs - no other programs affected. Closing and reopening Chowhound just gets same issue.

Symptom is back button appears not to work. When hovering it appears that the issue is a multipicity of 'additional sites' , and indeed on opening a new Chowhound tab these are found immediately (i.e. even before the Chowhound site - need to use "back" several times to return to the 'Tab').

In all cases the 'extra' links are of the form
http/platform.twitter.com/widgets/...
and the ... can be either 'twe' or 'fol' (but only those two

)

Occurrences (that I've noticed) are up to 5 (seemingly random occurrences of 'twe' or 'fol') although I get only 2 when opening a new Chow tab - those being 'fol')

So, to summarize, I CAN return to previous page if I hit back button about 5 times (to bypass these 'twe' and 'fol' interlopers) but they return each time I go to a new post or link - and again ONLY in CHOW - no other programs.

[meshane]

I've been doing some digging on this. It's a fairly complex issue.

I don't believe it is related to specific ads on our site and I thought previously. Sorry for the mislead earlier.

This appears to be happening widely around the internet, with growing complaints of this issue in June and July, and conflicting information regarding the resolution.

The truth is that this does not appear to be a problem with our site, but a problem with either a spyware program, an ad blocker, or a 3rd party ad network server, in relation to Internet Explorer.

This problem is only occurring in Internet Explorer. I highly recommend trying a different browser such as Chrome or Firefox. I should also mentioned that we no longer support IE7, but as a policy only support the two most recent versions of IE.

If one technically confident soul is willing to help me dig a little here, I'm wondering if "view.atdmt.com" appears in your host file. This file lives most likely at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts You can open it with notepad. Please note, I'm only interested in this information if you are seeing "view.atdmt.com" in your back button. The presence of "platform.twitter.com" appears to be a separate issue. Please let me know if it appears there, and if so, what set of numbers appear before it.

Another related question: There should be 4 ads appearing on each page. A banner at the top, a banner at the bottom. An ad below "Discussions You Might Also Like..." in the right hand column, and an ad at the bottom of the right hand column. I suspect that if you see this problem, (other than "platform.twitter.com") that you are not seeing all 4 ads load successfully. Please let me know.

- Shane

[sbp]

I haven't had the problem in a few weeks, but I DID have the view.atdmt.com url. My host file at the path you indicated appears to be just a sample file (PS: I'm using 64bit Win 7). Here is the full contents:

Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

[NE_Elaine]

My host file is the same as sbp. I am running Windows 7 64 bit, IE9.

I was seeing the view.atdt problem, but now I am seeing the platform.twitter problem. I did recently run a windows update. I don't know if there was anything in the update to inpact this problem.

Thanks for checking,
Elaine

[sbp]

Getting the problem again, with diferent ad-servers showing up in my back button. Now it's ad-ace.doubleclick.net/adi

[Veggo]

My back button is not working after every time I open a thread.

[NE_Elaine]

Has there been any progress on resolving this issue.

It seems to be happening pretty frequently now.

[Harters]

I have not previously had a "back button" issue but have this morning, Seems to be hung with this url - platform.twitter.com/widgets/twe

[Fydeaux]

I had that one show up a few minutes ago. Right now, I'm getting this:

http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/page

[NE_Elaine]

I just checked and that is what my back button is showing now - I wonder if there was a change. If there was, I have to say that it didn't fix the problem. I have also found that refreshing the screen does nothing to resolve the issue.

Very annoying!

[meshane]

Hi NE_Elaine,

No there has not been a recent change regarding this issue on our end. I will comment further in another post.

- Shane

[Harters]

This morning I find that, whilst a single click on the back button continues to do nothing, several quick clicks will take it back a page. The irritating thing is that there seems to be no pattern to how many clicks are needed - so I find myself back sveral pages (or even several websites.

For info, as well as the url, platform.twitter.com.widgets/twe, there's also a widgets/fol. Your guess is probably better than mine as to what these might be.

[Harters]

Update...... I've been checking and it is consistently taking five clicks on the back button of this thread before there's a return to the previous page (in this case, my profile page).

[NonnieMuss]

How to stop Twitter from ruining your Back Button:

Go to Tools>Internet Options>Security>Restricted Sites>Sites, and in "Add wesbite to this zone" bar, type in: http://platform.twitter.com then click "add" or "okay" or whatever it asks next. This has been working for me for about 15 minutes. I'm sure the ad will learn a way around this at some point, but this might help.

[estufarian]

Thank you - worked perfectly on next refresh and appears to have disappeared.

[grayelf]

I'm on three clicks to go back :-). Just tried nonnies fix, back to one click but very slow. Not a problem anywhere but CH.

[NonnieMuss]

I've been getting it on almost every site - even Google searches.

I wish I'd found the same thing for googleads/facebookplugins, etc.

[estufarian]

Just fired up my laptop and exactly same issue there. So (in my case) it's clearly a CHOW site issue.

[NE_Elaine]

I am having the same problem. Here are some quick screen shots I took.

[meshane]

Thanks for helping us characterize this problem. We've identified this problem as being related to a few ads that have made it through our ad network. The problem only impacts IE users. We have suppressed the ads we have identified, and we're working to see if there are more guilty ads. If you happen to come across this problem again, it would be helpful if you took a screen shot to help us identify the offending advertiser. Some tips on taking screen shots can be found here: http://www.take-a-screenshot.org/

[sbp]

No problem. I use the snipping tool in Windows 7 for screen shots, though the offending url is only visible when the pull down menu is accessed from right clicking the back button. When you screen shot this, you have to let go of the right click and it doesn't "take." Or are you interested in the actual ads displayed in the various frames around the page?

[meshane]

We're interested in the ads which appear on the page when you run into the problem. Sorry that I wan't clear about that the first time.

- Shane

[tlubow]

Will this work?

[meshane]

Hi tlubow,

Just to confirm, is this a screen capture of a case where you ran into this problem, or are you just testing. If you are reporting a case of a disruptive ad, thank you very much; this is helpful.

For future reference, it would be good to capture all 4 ads on the page, even if it take 3 or 4 screen shots. Also, it would be helpful if you could avoid having the menu dropdowns block part of the top ad.

- Shane

[tlubow]

This is the actual page (or top of it) when it happened. I will try to capture some additional screen shots for you - it shouldn't be a problem, because this happens to me 1 of every 5 times I'm trying to go back to the previous page. Ugh...it's so frustrating - especially when you're doing a search, because you have to start the search over again.

[tlubow]

Try these:

[mudaba]

I'm working on figuring this out, but in the meantime I googled this and found this as well: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/ind...

It sounds as though this could be spyware and unrelated to anything on CHOW?

Not a conclusive answer, and as I say, I'm still working on it, but wanted to share that.

Meredith

[sbp]

I also researched online, and it appears to be related to an ad server which supplies the ads on the site. I use malwarebytes, among other anti-spam and anti-virus, and they don't detect it as malware. See:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showt...

[mudaba]

You're right, sbp. It sounds like the ad operations team have tracked down the ad that this issue is connected to, and have blocked it. I'm awaiting more information from them about it, such as, will blocking it stop users from experiencing this issue immediately?

More as I hear it,

Meredith

[peppergal]

Thanks, Meredith and sbp, for your research on this. I'm totally techno-illiterate and don't know much more than working/not working. It seems that on Chowhound, on my computer, at least, things switch back and forth. Sometimes the "back" button works; sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the "new" flag works; sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes "my saved boards" appears; sometimes it doesn't.

It's annoying, but I try to wing it. Thanks for anything you can find out. And sorry I can't help.

[sbp]

Thanks!

[peppergal]

"Back" button still not working -- with same string of 'view.atdmt.com" url's mentioned by sbp.

[peppergal]

Same for me.

Also, I haven't had a "new" banner for the last several days. In addition, I can no longer access my saved boards, nor can I recreate, as the "star" no longer functions on the boards I originally saved.

[peppergal]

Just checked back, and "new" flags now appear, as well as "My Saved Boards".

Thanks.

[mudaba]

Lemme see what I can find out about this strange behavior. I haven't heard of this one before!

Meredith

[tlubow]

This is driving me crazy also. It's like having spyware.