Pop Ups

[Up2U]

Lately, over the past couple of months, there has been a colossal increase in the number of pop-up ad's received while on the web. Is this just me, or has the spam filter culture driven all these damned advertisers to use pop-ups instead ?

Anyway, I installed your free offer Alexa tool-bar. Enabled the pop-up filter. Made sure that NO SINGLE WEB SITE was approved for pop-ups, yet they still creep through at the rate of one every time I change pages.

I had a Loxinfo header on most, but have now disabled my Loxinfo ISP access, as I can access through a server at work.

But still things are driving me mad. What more can I do?

[sbk]

Best asked in the tech section, but I will tell you my solution. I have installed the google search toolbar which blocks pop-ups. I haven't had any get through and also I get the ease of searching google from any page. google, you gotta love it!

[stumonster]

if you are using internet explorer, you could try using mozilla firebird instead.

just export your bookmarks from explorer to a file in mydocs or somewhere, then when you run firebird go bookmarks--->managebookmarks file---> import

for exporting from exploder file---->import/export export favourites

firebird blocks all popups.. you have to enable websites to allow them to serve them to you... for example if your internet banking site uses them

[Up2U]

Well, I have installed the Google toolbar, un-installed Alexa.

To reach this answer page has meant accessing four earlier pages. That would have meant four pop-ups earlier today - one every time I opened a new page.

So far nothing, nada, niente, null, mafeesh, soon, rien, zilch.

So I think I may have done it, really done it. My God, I think I've done it.

Thanks, chaps, I feel happy, oh so happy, I feel happy and slappy and bright ....

[Sick Boy]

Stumonster's right. Mozilla does a good job of killing pop-ups.

If you still want to use Microshit Exploiter then Pop-up Manager is an excellent little program that does the job admirably, download for free from http://www.endpopups.com.

Some programs such as Kazaa which uses p2p will infect your computer with spyware which can be a real bugger to get rid of. In this case try Ad-Aware 6.0 by Lavasoft and that seems to do the job well. Get it at

http://lavasoft.element5.com/software/adaware/

Hope this helps.

[cdnvic]

Back home I set my firewall to block the domains that the ads come from. Many of them come from large advertising companies like doubleclick.net or valueclick. This blocks not only pop-ups, but banner ads too, as well as all those bloody cookies that track you as you move around. If you pay for bandwidth its worth it. I found after blocking alot of the ads that they were responsible for about 10-20% of the data, depending on where you surfed. Especially sites where the content is mostly text, but with alot of advertising on the page.

This won't work for pop-ups that originate from the site you are visiting though, so the Google thing may be your best bet.

I know websites need ad revenue, but I miss the days when the net was all amature.

Oh, one more thing... do NOT use this method to block thaivisa.com ads.

cv

[monty]

Run Google toolbar as well, works perfect...

They do spy on your surfing habits though, but they do state this very clearly during installation, AND give you the option to disable advanced futures (which does the spying) which is why it does't bother me...

[huski]

i use a proxy program called Proxomitron for anonymous web browsing...the current (and last) version of Proxomitron is Naoko 4.5. it also has popup busting and many filters for some of all those pesty scripts hidden in web pages.

here is a test page to see if your popup blocker is working...

http://www.proxomitron.info/tests/index.shtml

here is a test page to see if your remote proxy is working...

http://www.stayinvisible.com/index.pl/test_your_ip_nocache

[valentinoxxx]

Install Adaware 6; http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/

and

SpyBot Search & Destroy; http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download

The will clear out all the hidden spyware on your 'puter.

[Crash999]

Run Google toolbar as well, works perfect...

They do spy on your surfing habits though, but they do state this very clearly during installation, AND give you the option to disable advanced futures (which does the spying) which is why it does't bother me...

I also run the Google taskbar and it works great. 272 blocked so far.

Cheers!

[Up2U]

Guess I must be really stupid, or very unlucky!

I have kept the Google tool-bar on and it has blocked 27 pop-ups in the past few weeks. But every day another 20-30 get through in the hour or so that I am on line.

This disturbs my tranquillity enormously. Some pop-ups have registered on my brain, and the one thing I know is that I will never, ever, buy their products.

I will try some of your furhter suggestions over the next few weeks, but I am not an expert with computers or the Internet, so I am nervous of losing some things that I alreaady use and (partially) understand.

Thanks for the suggestions - here goes with the Stumonster suggestions - see you soon (I hope!)

[Up2U]

By the way, I forgot - one of the most persistent pop-ups is from Microsoft - for software to stop pop-ups!!

[organic]

Opera's also an excellent browser with a built-in popup blocker. If you do want to get away from IE, you may still need it on your pc as some sites like banks will only allow you to use IE. Whether this is because:

a. they think it's more secure

b. they don't want to incur the cost of extra testing

c. they haven't heard there's better software around

I've no idea.

You can also edit your hosts file to ban the domains of the worst offenders.

[bartender100]

Just my opinion,I never use IE, MyIE2 is a far better browser,and stops all pop-ups,its so annoying when you go into an internet cafe,and they are not using a stopper.Try MyIE2

[Guest IT Manager]

Well, I have installed the Google toolbar, un-installed Alexa.

To reach this answer page has meant accessing four earlier pages. That would have meant four pop-ups earlier today - one every time I opened a new page.

So far nothing, nada, niente, null, mafeesh, soon, rien, zilch.

So I think I may have done it, really done it. My God, I think I've done it.

Thanks, chaps, I feel happy, oh so happy, I feel happy and slappy and bright ....

Are you OK?

[phazey]

Some people actually dont realise they have inadvertedly *allowed* popups.

Installing DIVX for example, also installs GAIN - which is an annoying popup add thing.

Beware when installing "ad-supported" stuff, even tho you have *.whateverbar installed.

Also be aware running the likes of ad-aware (and removing GAIN) will break the said DIVX codec.

not nice.

Hope this helps,

./P

ps: why has no one mentioned Mozilla Firebird as the most superior browser ?

[asinah]

Alexa toolbars is actually spyware. Used it myself for a longtime until in webmasterworld.com it was suggested it is the worst toolbar and doesn't give a ###### about privacy of surfers. Every clicks, visits to sites get tracked and they sell the data.

Use the google toolbar and the problem is gone.

PS: I use Mozilla Firebird on my Linux PC. Works great