Regarding download links from a certain Mugen warehouse

[RicePigeon]

Hello MFFA,

 

As I'm sure many of you are aware, there has been some controversy lately among various Mugen communities regarding Mugen Archive. The issue, in particular, stems from their choice of site revenue through Adfly. As I'm sure many of you are aware, Adfly has gained a reputation, both within the Mugen community and from reputable sources in the anti-malware communities, for exposing visitors to various forms of dangerous malware through ads displayed on their site. While many people have tried to address these concerns to the owner of Mugen Archive, it has become evident that they have decided to willingly dismiss or flat out ignore these concerns.

 

We at Mugen Free For All do not wish to expose our users to these same dangerous security vulnerabilities. After discussion with the other staff, we decided that the best course of action would be to disallow links to the aforementioned website. Thus, until further notice, links download pages at Mugen Archive are no longer permitted on Mugen Free For All, effective inmmediately. We urge anyone who manages our collection threads to please replace any of the affected download links with safer alternative download links. We thank you for your understanding in this matter.

[Big Green]

Just have one more collection left to fix, and then I'm set...

[RicePigeon]

Also, just in case someone might bring this up, this decision has nothing to do with the attitude that the staff at Mugen Archive have been displaying towards certain members of MFFA and other Mugen forums. This is solely due to the security risk with the Adfly links, which were already prohibited here long before this incident happened.

[Ryon]

I thought we already banned adfly links?

[PlasmoidThunder]

You did, but this is in regards to linking to files hosted on the MUGEN ARCHIVE, which forces users who lack the necessary privileges to go through adf.ly in order to download files.

[AxSeeker]

What?!

 

I thought downloading anything off the internet was a security risk :P

 

In that case remove all mugen links everywhere..... sheesh

 

I don't think the mugen archive links should be removed, that's really unfair, it's not like the links to that place are hazardous to users. Once a user appears at mugen archive then it's on them whether they want to continue onward to download or not according to the service provider's wishes. At the very least in the collections there should be a warning and nothing more about a potential malware risk.

 

You're asking too much here to omit mugen archive all together and if these links are dangerous then how is this decision of downloading the content from mugen archive and then re-uploading it somewhere else solving the problem? :P Wouldn't that be exposing users to the supposed malware?

 

Not to mention losing out on all that unique and exclusive content that's hard to find anywhere else.

 

It's one thing to make backup links from other hosting services but to boot out mugen archive links, a fellow warehouse, is not sitting well with me. :(

This can't be the best solution. I hope you'll retract this decision if at all possible in the future for the sake of warehouses everywhere. We need to support each other in these terrible ad filled difficulties. As it is, it's hard to share anywhere else without getting the mugen police hassling us over paid hosting going to waste because of warehousing. We have a right; Damn-It!, to keep free mugen content free for all. We can't be encouraging users not to download from here or there because that just hurts mugen in the end, especially warehousing.

 

I hate adfly/ads in general as much as the next guy but I wouldn't exclude MMV or Mugen Archive links because of it. Ads are the unfortunate price for free hosting, but luckily you can skip ads and have virus protection to. Not every mugen forum/webpage can afford to be ad free like this place. These places shouldn't be punished and defamed like this because of financial issues. The downloads themselves are still free and should not be discouraged for collection because of a supposed malware scare. It's just not right. Linking to mugen content is the lifeblood of warehousing; take that away and you hurt our free trade.

 

 

[Ryon]

@AxSeeker , Once MFFA became a big community it no longer was a warehouse but a collection database.

 

We have surpassed your normal warehouse needs!

[AxSeeker]

*sigh*

 

I just hope we don't lose out on anything no more.

[RicePigeon]

This isn't about trying to censor mugen content or cut off Mugen Archive's source of income to keep their servers up. This is about protecting the MFFA userbase from major security risks. Had Mugen Archive simply placed regular ads on their site or used a much safer alternative like Google Adsense, we wouldn't have had to implement this policy in the first place.

[AxSeeker]

I've downloaded from adfly for years, I never got a virus, all you have to do is click skip ad

 

It's annoying but it's not a problem. It's like seeing an ad for shopping at wal-mart, except it's not on every page but just the download links you visit.

 

It's better than regular ads or google adsense in my opinion which is constantly on every page. Adfly is less painful imo.

 

You really wanna see under or over the MFFA banner a flash commercial for tires on every page :S Imagine how slow your visits will be to having to wait for that to load.

 

Come on!!!

 

 

 

Also no one can dictate what ads others can use/shouldn't. Whose deciding these things for everyone?

 

Also back to my previous point, what aboput 4shared links and others. They are all potentially dangerous in  that case as well. If you're gonna be fair, ban all these to.

 

I pulled this up from google

One of many btw...

 

 

Quote

 

Is 4shared really a virus? - Avira Answers

https://answers.avira.com/en/question/is-4shared-really-a-virus-38854

Jul 8, 2015 - 4Shared it's technically not a virus, but it does exhibit plenty of malicious traits, such as rootkit capabilities to hook deep into the operating system, browser hijacking, and in general just interfering with the user experience. The industry generally refers to it as a “PUP,” or potentially unwanted program.

 

 

 

The fact is virus and malware are in all these free web hosting/file hosting links. Every mugen downloader downloads at their own risk. That's why anti-virus crap exists. We can't hide from ads and their viruses. They're damn everywhere. I think South park did a whole season about ads recently?

 

I don't think MFG and MFFA intended to censor Mugen Archive but unfortunately there is a backlash to this kind of unintentional defaming for places like these that choose to use adfly and others.

 

But whatever, I'm moving on I guess. If I do get another virus, well I'll just have to buy another PC again :P As usual.

 

[Lord Batros]

my personal trick to skip adfly links , i copy the link's address and paste it in my browser, then delete the adfly code , BAM, but i'm like AX, never got a virus prior to doing that ,but i was also apparently one of the "lucky one's" that never got a virus off of esnips either, so idk , if it's true, then i see VERY much the reason to do so,and as staff i support this decision 100% regardless 

[TotalDramaXtremist]

50 minutes ago, Lord Batros said:

my personal trick to skip adfly links , i copy the link's address and paste it in my browser, then delete the adfly code

THIS. This is the trick to getting around the MUGEN Archive AdFly BS!

[AxSeeker]

Yeah totally, you can bypass all this crap. I even saw adfly blocker and skipper add-ons for firefox.

 

It's the same junk we've always been doing for all the other ones. I've also used esnips until I couldn't find out how to download anymore from its confusing new format.

 

I guess this link embargo won't really change anything. Meh, I guess it's no big deal either way. A bunch of us will probably still download from there.

[PlasmoidThunder]

Gather 'round, my children, and let Uncle Plas tell you a story -- a true one, at that.

 

While searching the Internet for Ruben's Final Destination, I managed to find a link to the stage section of his website, though the site went down a while ago so I needed to Wayback it (I couldn't navigate his site using an archived version, which is why I needed the specific page). Turns out there was some kerfuffle in the past with Ruben using adf.ly that he never revoked, so the links still used adf.ly; clicking on the d/l for Final Destination lead me to the usual adf.ly page, but instead of redirecting me to where it was supposed to go, I was sent to a virus site. What's humorous is that my browsing history showed that I had apparently gone to the intended MediaFire link before being redirected, so naturally I went straight to that.

 

So yeah, adf.ly is perfectly safe and you should totally use it over a respectable and trustworthy advertisement option such as Google Adsense.

 

5 hours ago, AxSeeker said:

Yeah totally, you can bypass all this crap. I even saw adfly blocker and skipper add-ons for firefox.

But you can't expect people to do this just so they can download content. Why put them at risk when you can link to the same file hosted on Dropbox, which is perfectly safe?

[RicePigeon]

The other thing that makes Mugen Archive a unique case is that the majority of content available there can also be found on the author's respective website, so the only downloads affected are offline creations, which I'm sure other people/warehouses have also reuploaded.

 

Also just because an adfly bypass exists, you can't expect all users to install add-ons or take convoluted measures to bypass dangerous ads. There are always going to be a handful of users or visitors who aren't as keen or tech savvy as some of us here and exposing them to a possible security risk just because they didn't take necessary precautions or know about the risks involved with adfly is not only something that we can't risk, but also an unrealistic expectation placed on these users.

[Basara-kun]

There's other problem apart of these ones RP: the new creators who actually host their chars there, instead of having their own website, they just upload at MA. My main problem is with Cesarsombra (also known as Cesarshadow or just as Cesar), which he made a lot of Megaman characters, mostly from X series, which most of them are spriteswaps to recreate the majority of not-made-yet chars done until now. I manage to reupload his MM Classic chars to one of the collections I made, but for the X section he made like the half of them.

 

I already replaced all MA links from MM Classic collection, now working on Samurai Shodown collection I made, but MMX would be a real problem there because of what I said

[Ryon]

I thought we banned 4shared as well. and the lesser known 2shared.

[Kazagami]

1 hour ago, Basara-kun said:

There's other problem apart of these ones RP: the new creators who actually host their chars there, instead of having their own website, they just upload at MA. My main problem is with Cesarsombra (also known as Cesarshadow or just as Cesar), which he made a lot of Megaman characters, mostly from X series, which most of them are spriteswaps to recreate the majority of not-made-yet chars done until now. I manage to reupload his MM Classic chars to one of the collections I made, but for the X section he made like the half of them.

 

I already replaced all MA links from MM Classic collection, now working on Samurai Shodown collection I made, but MMX would be a real problem there because of what I said

Got you covered, Basara. I've uploaded all Cesarshadow's stuff there into my Onedrive folder. I'll try to re-upload the other MA links soon.

[AxSeeker]

1 hour ago, Ryon said:

I thought we banned 4shared as well. and the lesser known 2shared.

 

If that's true then I guess it's all fair. Good on you then and you have my respect for that.

 

Also I recently went to MFG thread and there is damning evidence of malware coming from adfly. Not sure if it's direct or indirect malware though, I think the admin of Mugen Archive was maybe making the point that adfly is indirectly responsible for that as his defense for adfly. I'm not at all disturbed of that since I expect viruses from anything I download everywhere, again, i can't stress that enough, anywhere you download we're all taking a risk, no matter what the ads claim of as "safe ads".

 

However, what shocked me was the straight up denial by a staff member, I think?, from Mugen Archive in that thread. I'm not entirely sure though...

 

I still don't agree on the blacklisting of Mugen Archive, (mugen archive itself is not adfly), because of their ad choice but they should stand by their decision and accept that it is potentially a risk and at least not deny that part of it. Someone said at MFG something about staff being transparent with their users and I have to agree with that. I'm not saying they have to post a warning themselves, again no one should force them to do anything because it's their webpage/forum and if they want adfly then it's going to be adfly, but if asked they could at least level with the inquirer and at least not deny the obvious part of it that is a smoking gun.

 

I don't want them to cave in to peer pressure to switch ads but I do hope they'll at least come to terms with adlfy's potential malware contamination and not deny the possibility of it.

 

MFFA will do what it thinks is best for it's members, I'll respect that @GarchompMatt I just wish it didn't have to have a negative backlash like this. I seriously would like it if all these mugen communities could support one another rather than divide itself over stuff like this. I really hate blacklists though. It's just too personal imo whether intentional or not. I believe a warning in the collections about adfly and 4shared would have sufficed and allow the members themselves the responsibility of whether or not to participate in its download.

 

But what's done is done and again I've decided to respect that decision.

 

 

[Basara-kun]

1 hour ago, Ryoucchi said:

Got you covered, Basara. I've uploaded all Cesarshadow's stuff there into my Onedrive folder. I'll try to re-upload the other MA links soon.

Awesome, thank you very much  I got covered only the MM Classic chars, so you're free to edit MMX collection  to change the links

[Ryon]

@AxSeeker, The issue with adfly is, you don't really have control of what ad's are displayed, and unfortunately malware comes in the form of "new java update" or "your flash player is outdated" and thats when inexperienced people click on the adfly links and they get caught up.

 

If anyone ever checks the guidelines I pretty much made a list of websites we recommend and such (2shared is there I guess we didn't get rid of it)

FOR IMAGES

 

http://photobucket.com

http://imageshack.us/

http://tinypic.com/

http://postimage.org/

http://imgur.com/

http://someimage.com/

 

FOR FILES

 

http://www.depositFiles.com

http://www.filedropper.com/

http://www.2shared.com/

http://www.mediafire.com/

http://www.sendspace.com/

https://www.rapidshare.com/

https://www.mega.co.nz/

 

so there are ALOT of alternatives, but people try to use adfly to get back pennies for clicks. I considered it once to but it was so inconvenient for people that i decided it was not worth it.

 

[Laharl]

my favorite is the fake blue screens those actually make me laugh when I get them.

[Overlord]

By the way, don't bother asking them to remove your creations from their site if they're hosting it without your permission, they will just ban you and disregard your request.

I know you said not to mention their attitude, but this is just a fair warning.

[PlasmoidThunder]

8 hours ago, Ryon said:

http://www.sendspace.com/

I'd never consider using SendSpace for long-term file hosting due to their 30-day deletion policy where if a file doesn't get enough traffic/downloads, it gets deleted.

[RicePigeon]

9 hours ago, 140? said:

By the way, don't bother asking them to remove your creations from their site if they're hosting it without your permission, they will just ban you and disregard your request.

I know you said not to mention their attitude, but this is just a fair warning.

 

I never said to not mention their attitude, just that it wasn't a factor in coming up with the decision to blacklist their download links.

 

Of course that doesn't make their reaction any less scummy or irresponsible than it already is, fwiw.