"Four signs of a heart attack" scam

[Sid's Dad]

I don't normally look at the crappy ads at the bottom of the page on PH, but one kept coming up and I thought I'd take a quick look. "Four signs of a heart attack" it says, and goes on to mention the signs your body gives you to indicate an imminent heart attack.

Cue loads of waffle but no mention of what the four signs actually are. You have to watch the video. Turns out its 34 minutes long, and after ten minutes with still no mention of the four signs (but plenty about clicking on orange buttons to subscribe blah blah) I think 'bks to that!' And click off. But before going I note the name of the 'eminent heart surgeon' - Chauncey Crandall. Professor Google then points me to a dozen websites exposing this as a cheap scam.

Does anyone else have experience of being misled or scammed by advertisers on PH? Or do you just ignore the ads completely?

[mikees]

This fkng advert really gets in my tits and we have tried to point out on the website feedback section that PH is promoting pointless scam like adverts to no avial.


How about "how I made money following money advice from the bible?" Ffs

Really surprised hay market want to be associated with this crap.

Garlick please? Just the st scam ones?

Cheers
Mike

[Steffan]

I have no doubt PH and Haymaret do all they can to weed these out. Regrettably I suspect such scam emails are a real difficulty currently for PH etc and they are doing their best. At the moment these scammers are very difficult to address effectively. My personal IT motto is "If it looks too good or promises too much, then its a scam.

[dave_s13]

Chrome + Adblock solves this issue on a computer.

[Sid's Dad]

Steffan said:

I have no doubt PH and Haymaret do all they can to weed these out. Regrettably I suspect such scam emails are a real difficulty currently for PH etc and they are doing their best. At the moment these scammers are very difficult to address effectively. My personal IT motto is "If it looks too good or promises too much, then its a scam.

But it's not an email. It's an advert. A paid for advert. PH takes these people's money so they can plague us with misleading nonsense.

[mattikake]

And is that kind of Ad even relevant to a car enthusiasts forum?

[Steffan]

Sid's Dad said:

Steffan said:

I have no doubt PH and Haymaret do all they can to weed these out. Regrettably I suspect such scam emails are a real difficulty currently for PH etc and they are doing their best. At the moment these scammers are very difficult to address effectively. My personal IT motto is "If it looks too good or promises too much, then its a scam.

But it's not an email. It's an advert. A paid for advert. PH takes these people's money so they can plague us with misleading nonsense.

I would hope the PH monitors will be along shortly to explain how this happened. I doubt if PH/Haymarkwet were aware of the content. But it is for PH to explain. I certainly do not like this advertising.

[mikees]

I've been getting ths ad every page refresh for 2 weeks. If it's targeted that's even worse.

[Farm boy]

I've just NOT followed the same ad on the Basingstoke Gazette website.

[Halb]

Or Firefox plus adblock.

[Pints]

I've been clicking the report button on these. It then gets replaced with even more crap.
I don't want scantily clad ladies appearing on my browser when I'm on PH. I don't want stories on how I can improve my email/finances/health/looks. I'm fine with anything which is directly car related.

[GnuBee]

You mean an ad in the "You may like" lower banner, the banner coming from another content provider?

It's almost certain that Haymarket gets paid to let Taboola or whoever put their banner on the bottom of the page. The oversight that Haymarket has as regards the content that 3rd party displays is probably relatively limited (for example no porn) but I doubt there's a bloke in the PH office who's vetting each ad/content link and deeming whether it's acceptable or not.

The other part of this is... did you really expect it to be anything other than a marketing effort? If there's a genuine concern about what the indicators may be for heart problems I'd be asking a doctor, perhaps Google, maybe this forum but almost certainly not some random link provided by an advert aggregator.

[grumbledoak]

NB. Internet Explorer supports "Tracking Protection Lists". Click on the IE9+ link here and you are done.
https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/

[StevieBee]

Is it a scam?....or just an annoying, cynical advert?

I have seen it myself but like most, bailed out after about 5 mins but unless they are asking you to pay money for something you don't get or what you do get is useless, then it's not really a scam.

[Hoofy]

Click it and close it every time you see it. PH gets money, they don't get views.

[Pints]

And why is this thread still in Health Matters, and not in Website Feedback?

[Kiltie]

Farm boy said:

I've just NOT followed the same ad on the Basingstoke Gazette website.

Neither did I.

[NPI]

Halb said:

Or Firefox plus adblock.

Yep - the ads simply aren't there.

I know users are supposed to allow ads to support forums, but Haymarket is a commercial organisation, this site isn't provided out of goodwill.