What is pubmatic from mediafire?

One reason I absolutely do not trust and hate Mediafire...

When downloading the newest version of a map from my partner just now, Mediafire apparently downloaded a second file onto my computer. Let me preface this by saying I clicked on nothing but the download link; just one time. Most of you know Mediafire opens a new window, usually one reminiscent of the Adobe Update virus, which already always has me on edge.

When this new window comes up, 50/50 shot the sought file will download in the new window, the other 50% of the time it downloads in the original window. Today it did something different. It said "pubmatic finished downloading." Now, at first I assumed this was Mediafire's typical bullshit and ignored it, but when looking through my download folder for the map, well, guess what I see... pubmatic.

It is a file with no apparent extension, which is 0 bytes in size.

So the question begs: what the flying fuck is this file and why do people still use the absolutely shady, fucked up website that is Mediafire?

Bonus question: who wants to place bets on me needing to reformat the HD in a month?

If you need a quick fix I recommend AdwCleaner. It'll give you a 10 day trial to use the software's full features which include quarantine, full hard drive scan, and malware removal.

It appears to have a large library of definitions. I got infected with like 5 viruses in one day and AdwCleaner was able to handle the majority of them. There was a little cleanup work to be done in regedit.exe but the worst part was neutralized already. Once you find the malware's registry folders, simply rename them by putting an underscore in front the file/folder names. That way you won't cause irreversible damage to the registry. Once you rename a malware's registry entries, you will see a) if Windows will stop working or give you errors due to the rename and b) if the malware is capable of replicating itself from scratch every time you reboot the computer. Basically 99% of malware will have to recreate a renamed folder from scratch because it is not smart enough to realize you changed a little text around. It won't repair your changes it will just try to recreate itself

And as usual I recommend Chrome browser and adblock-Plus. As usual, back up all your valuable data every few months or more often if your hard drive is a volatile place.

I've always had Adblock and Noscript on for dealing with mediafire, and usually hadn't had any issues. But recently when downloading things from the site, click on the download link will open up another tab and load some random page or try to start a second download. Firefox does pretty well at telling me what's going on, so I haven't been screwed over by it, but I'm definitely not impressed with this new trend, and am going to start advocating for more usage of other services.

Like OneDrive :D You can even turn links into direct links and not even have to redirect people to other sites with it! It's great!

Also I would recommend AVG for an antivirus program in order to stay proactive against this shit, which is probably safer/easier to deal with rather than trying to clean up after the fact. AVG has always taken care of anything that comes up, at least for me.

Well, that's shady enough. I started using mediafire i don't know how many years ago when it was not a piece of garbage.
To be honest i use adblock and noscript on firefox (and the equivalent on chrome) so i didn't really noticed how bad it became until recently. I should move my stuff to another service.

Fonze said:

So the question begs: what the flying fuck is this file

PubMatic is adware, and a name you're likely to encounter more often with Windows 10 apps. It's possibly installed on your computer as the Showad.js/Ads.pubmatic.com browser extension, for which removal guides are available.

Not nice to know this sort of stuff is on Mediafire. Could move my files elsewhere, though that would break dozens of links in the forums.

Glad I've got my own server to upload files to now! Though admittedly, I've been using theultimatedoom.com for (complete) wad uploads lately since it isn't dodgy as hell.

Rayzik said:

to clean the registry

don't

IDK I've never had a problem with MediaFire. But then again I use Chrome so maybe that's why. :P

Mediafire is blocked from my internet service, so usually I go "FACK" when I see a mod that needs to be downloaded from there.

Tritnew said:

Mediafire is blocked from my internet service, so usually I go "FACK" when I see a mod that needs to be downloaded from there.

Have you tried VPN?

And what do you mean by blocked? It redirects to another webpage from your ISP? Or what?

The problem is, is that I'm getting my internet from a local Home Depot until I can get proper internet.

So simply, it's because of that. I also tried VPNs too.

Get "Getwad", ask the creator of the wad how's the file called, put the file name in the search engine of "Getwad" and search for it.

TheCupboard said:

If you need a quick fix I recommend AdwCleaner. It'll give you a 10 day trial to use the software's full features which include quarantine, full hard drive scan, and malware removal.

It appears to have a large library of definitions. I got infected with like 5 viruses in one day and AdwCleaner was able to handle the majority of them. There was a little cleanup work to be done in regedit.exe but the worst part was neutralized already. Once you find the malware's registry folders, simply rename them by putting an underscore in front the file/folder names. That way you won't cause irreversible damage to the registry. Once you rename a malware's registry entries, you will see a) if Windows will stop working or give you errors due to the rename and b) if the malware is capable of replicating itself from scratch every time you reboot the computer. Basically 99% of malware will have to recreate a renamed folder from scratch because it is not smart enough to realize you changed a little text around. It won't repair your changes it will just try to recreate itself

And as usual I recommend Chrome browser and adblock-Plus. As usual, back up all your valuable data every few months or more often if your hard drive is a volatile place.

What do you do if it keeps recreating itself? That happened to my laptop and I got a flashdrive, put everything I want into it and reset my laptop to factory defaults