Shortly after getting up this morning, I checked the online version of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and tried to read Kevin Dayton’s excellent story on what numerous sources have described as a federal investigation of Honolulu’s rail system.
But almost immediately after starting to read, a popup ad took over the page. Here’s what I saw.
It didn’t matter whether you clicked the “OK” or “Cancel” button, because both took you to another full page of the so-called “contest.” I could not find a way to return to read the newspaper.
I was reading on my iPad, and turned to the Safari preferences to be sure that the popup blocker was active. It was. But even after quitting and then restarting the browser, that popup still appeared and prevented reading of the article.
Finally I switched to Firefox, and it was able to block the ad so that I could read the story.
It’s an odd advertisement that purports to be tied to Time Warner Cable Internet LLC, but Time Warner Cable is now known in Hawaii as Spectrum. Casual references to the corporate name are uncommon. And it promotes a Walmart gift card.
I was logged on via our friends’ Spectrum Wifi, though. So is amazingly disruptive ad been fed by the Star-Advertiser, or directly by Spectrum? Is it advertising Walmart? None of this is at all clear, so the reader doesn’t know who to blame or where to complain.
In either case, since it prevents reading of the newspaper, it needs to be eliminated.
Anyone there listening?
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Would be interested if a call to Spectrum and Advertiser would be worthwhile. If Star-Adv generated, might be worth voicing displeasure. Getting around ads on web is getting more time consuming ?
Probably not. The SA is so short staffed that they seldom answer the phone.
The story is readable on my iphone.
I’ve run into this problem before. Next time it happens, try ‘refresh’ the page. I *think* that will make the annoyance go away. It’s definitely an annoyance.
It’s been doing this on the west Hawaii today website for months. I suspect they just don’t invest enough in a knowledgeable webmaster to stay on top of these hacks.
I assumed it was a malware trap and have never clicked on it. Are you sure it is a legitimate pop up ad?
No, I’m not. Fair question.
I’m having the same problem. SA needs to address the problem. We aren’t paying for this annoyance.
I have encountered varieties of this particular pop-up on several news sites including Seattle Times, Oregonian.
It takes different forms often Amazon customer or Walmart customer.
The Star-Advertiser seems the most frequent site I upon which it appears.
I have pointed this out to them.
This is from an errant advertiser from an ad network used by the Star-advertiser and others that syndicate their ads. Nothing you can do about it. The adware sites buy ads that are served to their customers like the Star-Advertiser website, but don’t have time or inclination to vette the buyers, who then serve up their adware.
I can’t even log into the site,even though I’ve been a subscriber for 30+ years. And customer “service” is a joke.
This is why news is hard to come by. In 1972 I looked into BBC News. Oh, the liberal Ph.D. professor warned., government-controlled news – beware. Today, you won’t find popups on BBC News. The worst malware virus I ever had came off a news site. I am happy news people like Ian Lind are now finding time to trumpet this terrible state of affairs in news.