Apr 13, 2016

How a scam made me a Wikipedia edtor


I was doing some online research when I found myself on this page. It looks a little bit like the page that Chrome displays when you go to a site that Google deems unsafe. Only it's red.

Danger! Danger!

Still, it's Google, right? It's got the Google favicon on the browser tab. It says "Automatically report details of security incidents to Google." It's got a link to their "Privacy Policy." So Google.

No.

If you click the OK box to dismiss the dialog, you get -- another copy of the same dialog. Click it again, you get it again. Over and over. Browser is now useless. Must be something really bad.

No.

The telltale: no indication of a secure certificate (green icon next to the URL). So this is not Google. And it's not anyone to trust.

To leave the page you need to note that the second time the dialog appears there's a checkbox that says: "Prevent this site from opening other popups" or words to that effect. That's the escape hatch. Click on it. Click OK, the dialog does not appear. Thank you, browser! And now close the page. And you are done.

My question is: how the heck did I get to that page.

It took a little figuring out, but I finally did. I had been reading a Wikipedia article and clicked a link in the article and that's what got me here. I tried the link again, and again. Each time I clicked it, I went to a different page. Just my luck to get that one.

Next day I did something that's long overdue: I created a Wikipedia account. Then I edited the page and got rid of the offending link.

I hope it will be the first of many contributions.

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