The Philosophy Discussion Forum

Started today June 10. Only on this site.

A small box with a word or phrase pops up

[ X Coffee ]

[ X Sugar ]

[ X Forum & Chat Providers ]

[ X Science ]

Happens on my phone and two different computers. Firefox and Chrome. I have popups blocked.

The word Coffee in my last post became a hyperlink which goes here:

viewtopic.php?p=806429#


Something weird going on.

Bottom of site main page where is says 'Powered by phpBB Forum Software phpBB Limited' has "Forum & Chat Providers" in grey where the mouse cursor changes to a hand like for hyperlinks.

New?

Weird! None of that is happening with me.

Might be some kind of malware that has gotten on your computer. That doesn't sound right at all.

I've got something in French with a picture of Elon Musk asking me to test my IQ. Before that it was random 'pick the vegatable/car/beverage' etc. with arrows to click on. Something smells wrong.

Afternoon June 10, everything went back to normal.

Morning June 11, the problem is back.

Scanned computer for malware. Nothing found.

Problem also on Edge browser.

Reset settings on all my browsers.

Set strict security on Firefox.

Seems to be working for now.

phyllo wrote: ↑Thu Jun 11, 2026 1:36 pm Reset settings on all my browsers.

Set strict security on Firefox.

Seems to be working for now.

I have the free version of Malwarebytes on my computer and use MS Edge. So far so good, no ads or pop-ups. Thank God and knock on wood. But someone out there will no doubt put in enormous effort to come up with a way to make the world a little bit worse for others. It's like a fundamental law of human civilization or something.

Update: I have now seen the same kind of pop-up as you described. It seems to be linked to google and gemini, and I’m guessing it’s a new format for advertisers to ply their loathsome trade.

mickthinks wrote: ↑Sat Jun 13, 2026 1:23 pm Update: I have now seen the same kind of pop-up as you described. It seems to be linked to google and gemini, and I’m guessing it’s a new format for advertisers to ply their loathsome trade.

It would appear so. In a recent post I used the word history just in a sentence like a normal person does. So I was curious to note that it turned into a link, and more so to see that the link only points back to the same page that the post was on. It looks like there is some new Google thing called anno designed to offer annotation, wiki lookups and ads, but that Rick has set it to skip rather than serve ads on this site.

If they didn't set it to be skipped, I expect it would try to interpret the text via some AI shenanigans to try and make everything appear relevant.

Thanks guys for mentioning this. I am not seeing it on my computer. In the revolving ad thingy at the top of the page I did once see the puzzling "Coffee... Sugar... " etc advert, but not as a pop-up. The word being underlined and made into a link is a type of advertising that I've seen occasionally on other websites but I'm dead against it and we certainly haven't deliberately enabled that here.

I will send Bora a link to this thread just so he knows what is going on.

I can get rid of it for a while by clearing the cache on my phone but it eventually returns.