Chess.com redirects to a scam page

I'm being automatically redirected from

https://www.chess.com/home

to:

[link remove -- VP]

Looks like there is a virus on the chess.com server.

It takes about a minute before the redirection happens.

The site uses a third-party hosting service. I tried to recreate the issue without getting a redirection, so it may be related to some malware on your system.

That said, if you see the ad that loads right before the redirect, you can report it directly.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/reward-earn-diamond-membership-by-finding-and-reporting-bad-ads

Happens to me too I have seems the redirect happens on chess.com's auto refresh and does not have to do with any specific ad.
I got it to stop by disabling javascript an then re-enabling it.

I was getting the attempted redirecting last night when I was playing some 3 minute blitz games. I try to support chess.com in a small way by not having adblock switched on, even though the ads with moving pictures can be very distracting, but having to click "No" to a pop-up from Firefox asking about closing the current page and redirecting to dodgy site is too much. I switched adblock back on and will be leaving it that way from now on!

Some "strange" things have been happening when posting on the forums recently. For instance one of my posts "bled" into the one above. I tried correcting, deleting, reposting, to no avail. And then when clicking the "quote" icon I received an alert it had been copied but nothing opened at the bottom of the page where it normally does. Displays seemed odd, too. I closed out and logged back in and things seem fine, for now. This was probably between 8 - 9 pm EDT.

Sometimes a previous post will have errant HTML in it or a copy/paste from somewhere can have hidden elements that can cause that. Apparently the editor code the site's uses tries to keep any valid formatting and underlying code. Sometimes that is a good thing and works as you would expect, sometimes it breaks things.

Not sure if that may have been the case in your particular attempt, but it is possible.

same issue, on both personal and work laptops!  Need to resolve urgently!  Pretty sure it's not my end.

I found the cause of this. It is not a virus on the Chess.com server, but a malicious ad relocating the browser to a scam page. Sometimes it succeeds in making the browser think there is user consent to relocate. Probably it intercepts mouse clicks or keystrokes on an invisible element to do this. I have reported the ad in a bug report.

I have been getting this problem on and off for the past few days. I was about to get diamond membership but this makes me a little uneasy.

The site uses a third-party ad provider and sometimes ads make it through that shouldn't. Getting premium removes ads, but the site does not condone those types of ads and they get removed when found and/or reported.

I keep getting sent to something that says I won "1000 $ take this quiz to claim your prize!" Yea im not stupid. Anyway to fix this? my popup blocker is on tho

Did you catch the URL? One has been reported to staff so it's probably that one and should be removed soon, but it would be good to know if there's more than one bad ad that made it through.

lucky puppy.top

I think its stopped tho. Thanks for helping, Martin.

Yeah, it was blocked from the ad provider.

This could be quite concerning, as one could also use a similar script to trick your computer into downloading malware. I don't know if it's possible, but it would be far worse if said script could also run the downloaded malware without your consent.

Yes, it's possible, and it has happened. It's called a malvertising attack. And, yes, some malvertising attacks don't require you to click on anything. If you don't run ad blockers and script blockers, you're depending on the ad server to never mess up. 

I recently had this issue, I got redirected to a scam website in the middle of a game, I didn't click anything.

This has been happening for the last two days on mobile. Upon finishing a game, a "mal-advertisement" pops up with a fake Amazon page and a scam for a free iPad. Malvertising impacts players who aren't paying members or haven't upgraded to hide advertisements.

If it happens again can you send me the URL via DM?