Linked Adverts on Arrse and slow start up

[06FA56Paderborn]

Two questions:

Recently I have started to receive adverts on the right hand side of the pages of Arrse, (I have no major problem with this as the site has to pay for itself somehow) however they are directly related to subjects that I was looking at on the internet through Google Chrome. How is this link achieved is it through some dodgy bit of software I, (or if Mrs 06 asks my son) have inadvertently downloaded or is it perfectly safe and nothing to worry about?

Secondly recently my computer has been getting rather slow to boot up fully when turned on, the hard disc active light stays on and you can hear the hard disc spinning for up to 40 mins, whilst the computer works things are very slow pages on the internet taking minuets to load and programmes taking ages to respond, looking at Windows Task Manager it seems to be System Idle Process that is taking up all of the disc usage >90%, any one any ideas how I can track down what is going on and stop it, ultimately I will reconfigure the C drive if I have to but that is a last resort.

 

[msr]

Chrome: If you are going to hand all your browsing habits / sites / history to the world's biggest advert seller, then in your own time...

Which antivirus are you running?

What has changed prior to the slow down? Have you installed some new software?

msr

 

[Utred]

Could be something you've caught... but could just be smarter advertising? Think I've noted since these forms went php the ads got a little smarter - ie they were obviously linking to some of the words in the thread. For example look at any thread that has the word Muslim or Islam in it - there's sometimes a Muslim dating site linked. The first time I spotted this on was the thread about the Gurkha who got RTU'ed recently... amused me.

A webpage can be set up to detect your browser history. Normally you get about 75% of standard browsers, but Safari is seriously easy 80%+ success rate, and chrome is about the easiest, 90% + success rate. It's a huge security flaw, but not a lot being done to look at it - possibly because of the advertising implication. Firefox version 4* is supposedly able lock it down. I did have a site bookmarked to demo it - but sorry can't find it anywhere... Advertising might be starting to use this - but I'm not sure. Most people are more familiar with getting a rough location from your IP address.

Definitely worth checking your system over. I won't worry too much about system idle process. That from memory in windows, that's basically saying just how much time your processor / memory is spending doing nothing (someone correct me if I wrong). Make sure your virus guard is up to date and run a full scan across your system. Couple of things you can try - do a disk clean up and clear out temporary internet files, and depending on which version of Windows try a defrag. One thing to check is how full is your hard disk? Anything over 95% (ish) and that can cause problems.

EDIT: * Just note firefox 4 is beta, so may cause you more problems, and I haven't read the notes if this feature is in.

EDIT2: Website to demo what history can be captured is here - What the Internet knows about you How "safe" that is, I don't know.