Doubleclick.net

sooty

New Member
Today I have suddenly started to get a warning message regarding DOUBLECLICK.NET which appears on several websites including ebay.

Does anyone know what this is and how I can block it permanently as it is becoming a real pain?

Cheers, folks.:)
 
Is it a Windows Pop-up? A SPam you see on websites?

All I can tell you is that a box appears on the screen headed

"Web Security Guard Warning
Ebay is downloading code segments from DOUBLECLICK.net
website this website is reported as dangerous."

I have never come across this before and frankly haven't a clue
as to what it is or is doing.

Any ideas?
 
Doubleclick is an internet advertising service, which uses tracking cookies to provide targeted ads for their clients (ie they track where you go from which website, and which sort of ads you click on). Because of this, their products are considered spyware by many anti-malware vendors. 'Crawler', the makers of 'Web Security Guard' is one of those vendors.

The popup is simply trying to inform you that a website you visited (eg ebay) is trying to set a cookie from doubleclick. This is a privacy issue, not exactly critical (depending on how paranoid you are) but nevertheless an annoyance.

Having said this, "Spyware Terminator" (another program by Crawler) used to be on spyware warrior's rogue list for bundling unwanted programs with their application. I tend to think that this is how 'web security guard' made it onto your pc in the first place, unless you actually remember installing it intentionally. If you don't, then I suggest uninstalling it (and spywareterminator) and instead using trusted antispyware applications such as spywareblaster, ad-aware, spybot search & destroy, and possibly McAfee siteadvisor (make sure to download the free one on the right). These programs all complement each other and don't need to run in the background, you just run scans with each of them every now and then. (Apart from siteadvisor, this will start whenever you open internet explorer or firefox, depending on what browser you use. It will warn you when you visit bad websites and will mark your search results on google/yahoo as safe or unsafe). All of them are free for personal use.

If you really want realtime spyware protection, I suggest you use spywareguard or Spycatcher express.

Hope this helps.

Oh, and if you're concerned about tracking cookies, add the domain of any tracking cookies found by adaware or spybot to the blocked cookies list. In internet explorer, go to tools>internet options>privacy>sites, and then add the website that set the cookie where it says 'address of website' and click block. In the case of doubleclick, the address to enter would be www(dot)doubleclick(dot)net (i replaced the dots with (dot) to remove the link).
IE will never accept any cookies from doubleclick again. If you use firefox, go to tools>options>privacy>exceptions, and then add doubleclick's address there and click 'block'.
 
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Doubleclick is an internet advertising service, which uses tracking cookies to provide targeted ads for their clients (ie they track where you go from which website, and which sort of ads you click on). Because of this, their products are considered spyware by many anti-malware vendors. 'Crawler', the makers of 'Web Security Guard' is one of those vendors.

The popup is simply trying to inform you that a website you visited (eg ebay) is trying to set a cookie from doubleclick. This is a privacy issue, not exactly critical (depending on how paranoid you are) but nevertheless an annoyance.

Having said this, "Spyware Terminator" (another program by Crawler) used to be on spyware warrior's rogue list for bundling unwanted programs with their application. I tend to think that this is how 'web security guard' made it onto your pc in the first place, unless you actually remember installing it intentionally. If you don't, then I suggest uninstalling it (and spywareterminator) and instead using trusted antispyware applications such as spywareblaster, ad-aware, spybot search & destroy, and possibly McAfee siteadvisor (make sure to download the free one on the right). These programs all complement each other and don't need to run in the background, you just run scans with each of them every now and then. (Apart from siteadvisor, this will start whenever you open internet explorer or firefox, depending on what browser you use. It will warn you when you visit bad websites and will mark your search results on google/yahoo as safe or unsafe). All of them are free for personal use.

If you really want realtime spyware protection, I suggest you use spywareguard or Spycatcher express.

Hope this helps.

Oh, and if you're concerned about tracking cookies, add the domain of any tracking cookies found by adaware or spybot to the blocked cookies list. In internet explorer, go to tools>internet options>privacy>sites, and then add the website that set the cookie where it says 'address of website' and click block. In the case of doubleclick, the address to enter would be www(dot)doubleclick(dot)net (i replaced the dots with (dot) to remove the link).
IE will never accept any cookies from doubleclick again. If you use firefox, go to tools>options>privacy>exceptions, and then add doubleclick's address there and click 'block'.

Thank you for an excellent answer I shall print it off and do as you suggest
your help is greatly appreciated. :)
 
true, peerguardian is great, but I don't use it much anymore, just because it limits you a fair bit..for example connections to mcafee will be blocked so siteadvisor won't work, google won't work etc..that's a bit paranoid I think. (I know you can permanently allow each website you don't want to block, but it gets annoying having to do that all the time when looking at new websites)

But i suppose that also depends on which lists you select. If you only choose to block spyware then it's ok, because the sites that are blocked, well, you wouldn't wanna visit them anyway. But once you add the advertising block list it gets a bit too restrictive.

So scooty that's what you should probably do if you do want to use peerguardian. (it will prompt you on install to choose which block lists to add..). Just remember, peerguardian needs to be running in the background whenever you are online in order to work, so it'll take up some of your pc's resources. Should be fine though if you have a halfway decent pc!)

oops, nearly forgot to mention, I mentioned spywareblaster before, this program blocks bad websites and just needs to be updated every now and then, no scans need to be run..
 
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