Pistonheads website slow, due to ad.crwdcntrl.net

[robinessex]

For the past few days, my piston heads visits, especially lookin at the classifieds, have been slowed down to a crawl by ad.crwdcntrl.net running. Never seen it before. Googling has revealed this:-

crwdcntrl.net is a domain used by Lotame which is an advertising company that is part of a network of sites, cookies, and other technologies used to track you, what you do and what you click on, as you go from site to site, surfing the Web. Over time, sites like crwdcntrl.net can help make an online profile of you usually including the sites you visit, your searches, purchases, and other behavior. Your profile can then be exchanged and sold between various companies like crwdcntrl.net as well as being sold to other advertisers and marketers.

Has this been activated by Haymarket or not? And how the hell do I stop it ruining my PistonHeads visits?

[Ollie_M]

Hi robinessex

I will speak to our ad ops team ad see if they can shed any light on this for you.

[robinessex]

Ollie_M said:

Hi robinessex

I will speak to our ad ops team ad see if they can shed any light on this for you.

Ok, thanks

[turbobloke]

Out of interest, from a disc search the term 'crwdcntrl' is somehow embedded in dozens of saved webpages from PH dating back to late 2013 possibly earlier. Also there are equally many 'JScript Script' files apparently associated with the webpages in some way, these have filenames such as cc and cc_ag and utag_010 with some named config. As a non-techie is it OK to assume this garbage is harmless on disc apart from adding to general clog?

[robinessex]

This is still driving me nuts. And it's the ONLY website I've come across it with it.

[oldcynic]

It's the kind of thing that makes users run Firefox with AdBlock Plus and NoScript. I'm sure similar is available with other browsers.

Visiting links from the likes of the Daily Mail reveals Scripts running from an astonishing number of domains.

[funkyrobot]

How does one find out about scripts that are running and what is the disc referred to above?

[Ollie_M]

Hi all, sorry it's taken a while. I'm sitting down with the 'Gaffer' of the dev team today so will have an answer and advice for you all later today. Apologies for the troubles you're facing.

[Ollie_M]

We do use Lotame as part of our DNP platform, but this shouldn't affect the speed of the site, however I have raised this as a job for further investigation

[Ollie_M]

Yes this issue will be investigated by the developers. Can I ask what device, OS and browser you are using?

[robinessex]

I'm using Firefox, with windows XP

[ApOrbital]

Xp sorry but you need to remove that crap asap.

[Ollie_M]

Many thanks

[robinessex]

ApOrbital said:

Xp sorry but you need to remove that crap asap.

Industry continued to use it when windows 7 & 8 came along. Couldn't be bothered to re-train everyone when what they were using worked ok. Windows 7&8 was crap anyway. An it's similar to Unix, which is what I started with with work stations. I'm quite pisssed of with Microsoft keep 'fixing' what isn't broken! With rubbish that's even worse.

[robinessex]

Still driving me mad. It's the ONLY website/forum I use where I find this dam thing interfering.

[okgo]

All websites have similar stuff in the background, Lotame are just one of many of online ad networks using the same software to build profiles of users to flog to ad agencies for their clients, its unlikely its what is making it super slow I would have said.

[robinessex]

I've just 'waited' 45 seconds for ad.crwdcntrl.net to do it's 'thing'. And that happens almost EVERY time I go elsewhere on the site, or move on a page in the Forum.

[okgo]

It must be something to do with your connection/pc/os then as its super quick on my mac

[jammy_basturd]

robinessex said:

Still driving me mad. It's the ONLY website/forum I use where I find this dam thing interfering.

Don't expect PH to do anything about it soon. There will come a point in the near future when PH have annoyed so many non-members that they don't come back and regular members just use AdBlock and thus all the precious ad revenue will dwindle. At which time, turning the tide will be an enormous task.

[robinessex]

okgo said:

It must be something to do with your connection/pc/os then as its super quick on my mac

Don't see why. It's waiting for something coming via my broadband, which is bloody fast. And it ONLY happens in PH.