NoScript on Firefox seems to stop most of them for me. I have to allow gardenweb and houzz javascript to be able to post, but forbid all others. Doing this, there are some ads, but tolerable.

Kr is probably correct, sounds like a virus to me.

On my phone I have not seen a change. Sometime later I'll boot a computer and let you know how it goes.

Nope, couldn't be a virus...unless it's a GardenWeb virus. All the ads were from GardenWeb. THE GOOD NEWS is that, tonight, everything is back to normal and not a single ad to be seen (thank goodness and knock on wood)! Makes me wonder if someone at GW was running some experiments or something. I sure hope last night's experience wasn't a taste of anything coming down the pike. I have seen others having problems, but, with Adblock Plus, last night's experience was completely new (and awful).

I don't know how ads are served on this website (I have my own way of blocking annoying ads... but I don't find GW/Hz to be a problem at all) but the record needs to be set straight that you can, theoretically, get a virus from almost any website. At least any website that has advertisements. Because ad networks can be compromised. This is one reason browsers have to be updated so often. It happens about 2 or 3 times a year to me; most recently on a legal discussion forum. I just browsed to it, and my antivirus caught it trying to install a virus. It's just curious no one else reported your problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising

That being said; who knows, maybe they just wanted to target guys named Brandon who live in TN because you're a hot advertiser market right now ;-)

brandon -- Do the popups look like this one?

If so, you'll see these if you're viewing the forum and not logged into your GW account. I discovered this the other day...drives me nuts.

Yes, it did look something like that.

I thought about not being logged in, and checked that. I was logged in. Anyway, the problem is gone. It's not happened since.