Why am I seeing ads on websites including Wikipedia?

I was reading about hash functions on Wikipedia when this ad popped up. I was appalled and flabbergasted and annoyed to find advertisements akin to this one dotting my article like sprinkles on a cupcake.

Annoying popups appear after you hover over them.

Annoying ads on Wikipedia

I now notice that these ads are appearing on any web page I visit including Superuser.

Why? How can I get rid of them?

By the way, these ads have the very gall to surface on Superuser, as seen here: Ads on superuser

David Faux

Posted 2012-01-10T04:29:17.297

Reputation: 4 477

19Do you have any extensions installed? If so, one of them is doing this. – Paul – 2012-01-10T04:41:37.853

6Wow, that was it. I had a malicious extension called "GameVance" installed. Thank you for bringing that up and solving the problem! – David Faux – 2012-01-10T04:44:25.603

3Great, I have added it as an answer if you want to accept or upvote it. Or provide your own answer as you identified the extension and accept your own answer. – Paul – 2012-01-10T04:49:49.493

10This is sort of obvious that "GameVance" was doing this considering there is a huge "GameVance" logo in nearly every pop-up in that screenshot. – Ramhound – 2012-01-10T15:07:00.253

Answers

This is usually caused by "malicious" extensions, and removing the extension will normally solve the problem.

Paul

Posted 2012-01-10T04:29:17.297

Reputation: 52 173

35Some other malicious extensions: bing toolbar, ask toolbar, any toolbar. :( – Demolishun – 2012-01-10T08:15:39.813

4This. Don't just remove the extension, but do an anti-virus/anti-malware scan on your computer. Most of the time, if you have something like this, there is also something else hidden on your computer. – Nicholas – 2012-01-10T17:45:41.477

1@Demolishun Bookmarks toolbar? (Well, I suppose, if it has Facebook on it...) – Izkata – 2012-01-10T21:51:56.943

I think this is called Adware.

– styfle – 2012-01-11T06:09:40.410

It looks like someone downloaded a "free game" that came with some scummy advertising stuff. Just uninstalling the plugin won't get rid of everything:

Here is Gamevance.com's official information on deactivating and uninstalling their software.
Here are some suggestions from a secondary source, including files and folders and registry settings to remove.

Luckily, from the sounds of it, they're pretty good about actually uninstalling when you uninstall.

Plutor

Posted 2012-01-10T04:29:17.297

Reputation: 541

In case the official instructions don't work, or even if they do, you might want to run an adware removal tool such as Ad-Aware. For every piece of malware that asserts its existence you are likely to have a dozen or so that do not.

fluffy

Posted 2012-01-10T04:29:17.297

Reputation: 595

-6

Can also be because that website was running short of money and decided to accept ads - Wikipedia in particular was running short of money, but I have no information on whether they decided to accept ads.

If so, an antivirus program or an antispyware program will probably NOT remove the ads.

I've found a program that claims to remove even those, but I haven't tried it:

http://simple-adblock.com/

milesrf

Posted 2012-01-10T04:29:17.297

Reputation: 54

7If you look at the screenshots, it is clear that the ads stem from adware or a rogue extension. – iglvzx – 2012-01-11T05:59:44.603