A new and annoying pop-up on VideoKarma
 

Everytime when I sign on to VideoKarma, this message pops up: "This website wants to run the following add-on: 'Adobe Flash Player' from 'Adobe Systems Incorporated'. If you trust the website and the add-on and want to allow it to run, click here..."

OK, I already have the latest version of Adobe Flash that is available for 32 bit Microsoft Windows XP Professional installed, which is Adobe Flash Player 11 ActiveX (11.6.602.180)

Adobe confirms that Flash is working properly.

This computer has the latest updates from Microsoft, along with the IE 8 browser.

VideoKarmas seems to still be working OK without the mysterious "add-on" but all of a sudden over half of the websites that I visit have stopped working and keep telling me that I need Flash. (Some say at least version 10 although I have 11 installed and working.)

Is this an evil plan to for force everyone to install google chrome?

If one forgets to uncheck it, Adobe will install google chrome automatically.

Jas.

Firefox and Noscript = no problems.

IE 9 and no pop up's on mine

No Pop Ups here either on Firefox 19 or IE 10.

It's probably the Google AdSense, those are the banner ads at the top of the page, they are supposed to be here to raise revenue and are not a virus.

Have you tried "Clicking here" and allowing it to run? That should fix it.

If you DISABLE SCRIPTS you wont see that annoying stuff :)

Sounds like you've got some kind of infection on your PC. The one and only time I managed to infect a PC was by clicking on something similar.

As a minimum run the free verion of Malwarebytes which is pretty good at sniffing out problems like this. http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Yup! :yes:

I use Firefox with AdblockPlus and Ghostery. Maybe it's me but I find NoScript a bit hard to configure for my needs. ABP and Ghostery seem to work well right out of the box.

im using a mac with safari, and NO add ons whatsoever.

Never had this issue.

Microsoft introduced this behavior starting with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and its version of Internet Explorer 6 SP2. It is a legitimate alert, though because of its appearance underneath the browser's controls (toolbar and menu area) the alert has been faked by some websites.

Assuming it's legitimate, you are probably seeing the alert for three reasons:

1. Your copy of Flash Player updated itself automatically. All recent releases do this (though so far I haven't seen one install silently).
2. Something on the web page (probably an ad) wants to make use of Flash Player.
3. Something is wrong with the Flash Player installation on your computer.

I don't use Internet Explorer as my regular browser, so I couldn't tell you if an upgraded plugin will produce this message. I think it does.

If the alert is being faked--and it can be hard to tell for sure--it is very likely you have some malware on your computer. If this particular message appears outside of Internet Explorer, it's fake. (Were the alert fake, I'd expect it to put up a much more alarming notice, in the hope of scaring you into doing something.)

If you can, I would suggest using a browser--any browser--other than Internet Explorer.

Perhaps your Flash installation is corrupted. I would uninstall it, restart your computer and then redownload the latest version directly from the Adobe web site.

The program offered rotates over time. Most usually I see a suggestion to "include McAfee Security Scan" with a Flash Player download. This sort of practice absolutely galls me. I'm sure they make money by doing this, but it's very tiresome to deal with over and over. (Some programs, such as Oracle's Java, are even worse and pull this stunt when installing security updates. I've only noticed Adobe's updater doing this when a new major version of Flash Player comes out and you get directed to the Adobe site to download it.)

Buried in Adobe's troubleshooting pages are links to download the full, not-infested-with-offers-for-other-programs installers for the ActiveX (for Internet Explorer) and "other" (Firefox/Opera/Netscape) versions of the Flash Player plugin. It would be SO nice if they would just deliver these in the first place!

Flash is very annoying and intrusive. Unfortuantely there isn't an alternative that will make sense of flash content. Unlike (say) PDF where there are plenty of alternatives to Adobe's bloated offering. Despite Ipads and Iphones prohibiting flash altogether there's still a huge amount of it about so we're stuck with it.

I don't see why VK should have any flash content, except by following a link to a page containing flash. Hence a popup on VK saying you need flash is likely to be malicious.

I recently installed Windows XP on an old PC that I am refurbishing. Firefox went in as early as possible as the web browser. I delibrately went to a site known to use flash (BBC Iplayer) and was politely told that I needed flash. No popup, just a message where the flash content should have been displayed. I installed flash, remembering to untick the box that would have given me a McAfee scan or somesuch.

Yes indeed -- IE started going downhill (becoming dumbed down,etc) as a whole with the SP2 update of IE6)