Vote for our Site

What are these alert boxes?

[dvduval]

What's the deal with these alert boxes that popup when you are trying to download something or when you are leaving a site that say:

Please Vote For This Site:
OK or Cancel

What the heck is this? How is it helping them to vote?
Can it hurt me by installing something on my computer?

[coosblues]

I'd never accept any of those alert boxes. They can do from no damage to actually changing certain registry keys. As per the voting I'd assume it just sends a page hit count to another url or perhaps a cookie (yours).

[dvduval]

I'd be curious to know what can be done specifically.
I'm pretty sure it can change your homepage to something else. I've had this happen to me. What else can it do?
If you click 'cancel', are you safe, or should I click the x?

[Key_Master]

"X" and Cancel are the same thing. No real way to prevent a Website from misusing it unless you disable JavaScript. It's more of an annoyance than a security issue though, if that makes you feel better.

I included a snippet of code to show you how it works.

<script language="JavaScript">
if (confirm("Click OK to visit Yahoo.com")) {
location.href="http://www.yahoo.com/"
}
else {
alert("You clicked Cancel! Oh well- you're still going to Yahoo!");
location.href="http://www.yahoo.com/"
}
</script>