You wanted the Gazette but you got directed to a porn site. Nasty bit of business on the part of someone who wants to do us harm. When we figure out who is doing this - we will tell you.

News 100 yellowBy Pepper Parr

October 17, 2014

BURLINGTON, ON.

 

If you are a loyal Burlington Gazette reader and you are using an Android based tablet – you may not get through to us. Someone has hacked into our site and installed a bug of some sort that re-directs people who use an Android device to reach us.

PORN XXX IMAGE

This is not what we are about. Someone wants us off the air. Libel suits didn’t work.

We have people working on the problem. One reader was kind enough to suggest a particular piece of clean-up software that will fix this particular problem and do continual sweeps to catch future attempts to interrupt the flow of news.

We are clearly ticking off someone somewhere. It used to be that people would sue us for libel hoping that would shut us down. Now they are resorting to really sneaky dirty tricks – we must be doing something right.

Legal counsel for the Burlington Air Park has asked us to clarify our comment on who might have hacked into our site.  We don’t think the Air Park did this – we have no evidence that they did so.

One reader said: “Since yesterday when I try to open www.burlingtongazette.ca on my Android powered tablet, I’m re-directed to any number of porn sites not your newspaper.

Porn - sending you somewher else

Someone is using malicious software to re-direct people who use Android driven devices to filthy web sites.

“I uninstalled and re-installed Chrome (my browser on the tablet) and still got the same result. I installed a completely different browser (Mozilla Foxfire) and got the same unfortunate redirect result.
This is not happening on my PC computer version of Chrome. When I enter your URL on my computer I get to the Gazette.

We are grateful for the comments and the alerts. We note that no one has commented on the porn sites they were re-directed to.

We are on top of it – it just takes longer than we expected to source the appropriate software; install it and then give the people who operate the software the permissions they need to get into our server and do their clean up.

 

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3 comments to You wanted the Gazette but you got directed to a porn site. Nasty bit of business on the part of someone who wants to do us harm. When we figure out who is doing this – we will tell you.

  • Maggie

    Perhaps this is why the email I sent you regarding an information night I am hosting bounced back. I will try again this morning.

  • Trinity

    I was on my IPHONE yesterday and it did it to me. This bug is bad as it will not let you exit the site. It freezes your phone. It took quite a bit of time to get the phone unfrozen and reset.

    However, my IPAD and PC were not impacted.

    I hope you find who did this.

  • zaffi

    What a foul, nasty and childish thing to do. Not just to the Gazette but also to your subscribers. Did they not think for a second of the detrimental impact this could have on another? What if it were a young person or an abused woman/girl looking to read one of your articles only to be assaulted by this site redirection?

    I certainly hope you find out who is accountable and take appropriate action.