This has bitten me twice now, so I'm documenting it to keep it from taking my time in the future. If you have Kaspersky Anti-Virus installed on your machine, it's very likely you're missing a lot of what the web has to offer. By default, Kasperksy seems to block any URL that contains the word "banner". So - if you were to try to go to www.banner.com, you see a blank page. If you have a website that has a (totally legitimate) "banners" directory where you store images, you may notice that you don't ever see those images show up on your website. In my opinion, the blanket treatment of the word banner as an evil object is inherently wrong and a very poor practice.
Anyway, if you run into this, here's 2 solutions to fix it. The first is of course to remove the word "banner" from your URL if you have the ability to - perhaps rename the folder to "bnr" or might I suggest "PleaseRenderThisContentSillyAntiVirusSoftware". The good part of this solution is that anyone else using Kaspersky will magically see your sites content without having to adjust their own machines. The downsize is - sometimes you can't adjust that folder named "Banners".
The other option is to open up Kaspersky, click on "Anti-Banner" and select settings. Next to the "Enable Anti-Banner" checkbox you'll see another "Settings" button - click this button. (It's ok to leave "Enable Anti-Banner" checked). On the next pop-up, on the "Additional" tab, check the box for "Do not use common banners list". Click OK to close this last pop-up, then click "Apply" on the pop-up that had the Settings button. You should now be able to see URLs that include the word "banner". The plus side of this is, you can see full content from any page now, no matter what website (go check out www.banner.com again). The downside is - you just fixed your machine, but what about random user X who's got Kaspersky running and can't see your pretty banner when they navigate to your website?
