I'm having problems getting to a download and I can't figure out why - is there a fix for this?

I download brush sets from various sites for use with Photoshop, but many of them seem to be using that godawful ad.fly crap – and I simply cannot even get a connection to this ad.fly without my internet browser pretending that it’s never heard of ad.fly. I just get a “could not connect” error, or 102, or some other less than helpful message to indicate what the problem could be. As far as I know I was able to download various brushes and textures from places like mediafire but now unless I know what the direct link is, I haven’t got a hope in hell of getting them. Does anyone know what the problem might be here and is there a way to fix it besides making my own brushes and textures (which is not likely to happen considering I use Photoshop more for a hobby not a profession).

I’m using 64 bit windows 8 and have both IE (which I hardly ever use) and Google Chrome.