Yesterday I got RickRolled (again), which isn’t so bad, except that this one did everything it could to act like a virus and not just a prank.
The offending link is http://internetisseriousbusiness.com/ (don’t go there!).
It resizes your browser and starts playing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” while moving the browser window into all four corners of the screen, again not so bad. Here’s the nasty part: you can’t close the window.
The page has an onbeforeunload event handler that gets triggered when a window/tab close attempt is made. It throws up an alert box with part of the song’s lyrics in it. Closing it just opens up another alert box effectively keeping you from ever closing the window. Most people have no choice but to force quit their browser, but here’s how to get out without losing everything you’re working on:
- Keep your finger down on the Esc key till there are no more
alert boxes - Turn off JavaScript (this is easier if you have a tool like the Web Developer Toolbar Firefox add-on or the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar)
- Close the offending window
- Throttle the jerk who RickRolled you
The Whois information for http://internetisseriousbusiness.com/ is:
Domain Name: INTERNETISSERIOUSBUSINESS.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS43.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server: NS44.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Updated Date: 28-jan-2008
Creation Date: 08-mar-2007
Expiration Date: 08-mar-2009★
That got sent to me about 6 months ago and I immediately posted it to Twitter thinking it’d be funny. Nobody really thought it was. In fact, I met Jeremy Keith for the first time in person at SXSW and he still remembered.
I remember being asked to leave one of my web development classes in college for pulling a similar prank. However, it was pre Rickrolling so I was forced to use the horribly obnoxious hamster dance.
FYI: At SXSW the entire bowling tournament was rickrolled.
or… use chrome… There’s an option after a while to force the page to stop displaying alerts (plus you could just kill the page with the task manager)
So if you’re using IE anyways, Chrome (or Iron) is a way better choice… I understand if you’re using FF with plugins and whatnot.