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Not too long ago, on one Stack site, I had accidentally clicked on a sidebar ad which I believe was for the "English Language & Usage" Stack chat room. Instead of getting a chat room, I was given a blank page, but the URL still pointed to what seemed to be the correct URL for the chat room.

This brings me to a few hours ago where I had been browsing another stack site and clicked on a question which brought me to another blank page. On the main page the browse over tooltop for the question worked, and provided a snippet of the question as usual, but a blank page was given when clicking on the question itself. Other questions in the stack worked, but this one did not. There were views, votes, and even answers, so I'm not sure why this happened. The issue happens with the UX question "Apologizing for Ads."

I have read a few questions such as this one, but I do not have any redirects, crazy ads, or anything that would make me suspicious of malware, just a blank page.

I also did find this question, which mentioned a bug with commenting on questions, which is a little different from my issue.

My question is, what possible reasons could blank pages be shown for URLs that should be working properly? Is there something malicious going on, or is there just some sort of bug/issue present?

Note: The "question" blank page was present in the same tab, but the blank page for the "Chat" I believe opened in a new tab (not sure if this matters at all).

Image of console and HTML:

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    Click F12 (assuming you're using Chrome), check the Console and Network tabs. What do you see? Getting any errors?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 14:56
  • Would it be wise to go back and check? I didn't want to spend time on the page to snoop around.
    – XaolingBao
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 15:24
  • If you want any chance to solve it then yes, I fear you'll have to spend time checking it. (Obviously it's something on your end, otherwise we would be flooded by thousands of bug reports by now.)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 15:33
  • Okay, so I went back and it still is blank. There is nothing in the console, but there is a listbox that has selections of "top" or some chrome extension. The extension is selected in the blank page, whereas this page for instance, has "top" selected. I don't have any malicious extensions (everything is Google extensions like docs, docs offline, and slides). The HTML for the page was very minimal as well.
    – XaolingBao
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 16:16
  • And Network tab?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 16:23
  • Uploaded a picture of everything I could find, in an edit above. There was nothing in network, or console. In sources the page had some weird lettings as shown above, but that disappeared when trying to check out other tabs and clicking "f5" in order to refresh and see what's going on. I did click on timeline and it started some recording after I refreshed, which I'm not sure if that's normal as I'm not sure if I've ever clicked on timeline before. I think the extension has nothing to do with what's going on, but figured I'd post everything I had. Thanks for the help I appreciate it.
    – XaolingBao
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 16:31
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    Think I cracked it: productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/XqrQKRYi638 (bottom line - it's the doing of your anti virus software.)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 17:15
  • Thanks, I'll take a look into it, but usually my AV would say it blocked something in the console. In this instance, which is very odd, it doesn't show anything at all... AT least, from what you found, there isn't anything malicious going on... thanks!
    – XaolingBao
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 17:56
  • Cheers, and good luck!
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 18:06

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