Forums > Social Chat > Who controls the pop-ups?

Login/Join to Participate

Jelloambiguous
646 posts
Location: Mpls, MN, USA


Posted:
What makes them appear at one site but not another? And why do they show up sometimes but not others? Right now everywhere I go here on HOP I'm attacked by the ever annoying "Are You a Home Owner??" pop-up, the last one I tried to close caused windows to freeze and closed all my browsers. Why me!!!?????

_________________________________
Fuzzy Dice.......................................


Bender_the_OffenderGOLD Member
still can't believe it's not butter
6,978 posts
Location: Melbourne, Australia


Posted:
are you aware if ad-aware? it takes off the not so rare mal-ware out there! so there's no internet scare.

ad-adware can be found here: www.lavasoft.de

erm..prepare if you dare.

i will be in my bat-lair.
eating cranberries.
by the pair.

Laugh Often, Smile Much, Post lolcats Always


flidBRONZE Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,136 posts
Location: Warwickshire, United Kingdom


Posted:
I'm pretty sure god does

no wait, it's doubleclick the evil b******s. They use cookies any I heard cookies are evil!

Umm, basically some sites pay their bandwidth costs/make money (the internet isn't free ya know) by adverts.
Some adverts are banners, others are popups. If you get popups when not visiting sites with popups you either have spyware doing it, or you visited a site which takes advantage of how marvelously well MSIE was written and stays resident after you've visited the site, popping up adverts randomly. Press ctrl-alt-delete and kill the process doing it.

Why you? Well, the sites with the most popups on are usually dodgy porno ones, so, umm, y you?

DuncGOLD Member
playing the days away
7,263 posts
Location: The Middle lands, United Kingdom


Posted:
I've never had pop-ups appear when using the HOP shite so I think it might be software that some sh*tty little company have secretly sneaked into your computer to activiate while you're web whacking.
Maybe use your add/remove program to take it out but be careful you don't delete something important!

Let's relight this forum ubblove


flidBRONZE Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,136 posts
Location: Warwickshire, United Kingdom


Posted:
you won't find spyware in add/delete

AnonymousPLATINUM Member


Posted:
I'd also recommend going and getting

SpyBot - Search and Destroy

or

The Cleaner

Both are really good at getting rid of the popups but they also remove tracking cookies and some other nasty stuff that ActiveX allows people to do with your web browser...

Also in IE on the menu go into

Tools -> internet options

click on the Security tab and then Default Level and move the slider up to High. This should stop anything nasty getting on your machine in the mean time.

Oh and in future if you hit a web site and it automatically starts to download something click NO!

SpyB.

Really happy with the great job M$ do!

Magnusmember
279 posts
Location: Bath, UK


Posted:
If you get banner ads on sites like home of poi that don't normally have any, then somehow you have gained a program that pops up it's own ads.

AD-AWARE is wonderful, like bender says. use it.

To get rid of pop-ups on other sites, I like Slim Browser, which also puts all the sites I'm browsing in the same window.

https://www.flashpeak.com/sbrowser/sbrowser.htm

Magnus... pay it forward


DomBRONZE Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,009 posts
Location: Bristol, UK


Posted:
It wasn't HoP opening those popups - it was a hidden browser window. A lot of the sneakier ad heavy websites open up a small browser window and either place if off the visible screen, or have it permanently minimised (thanks Windows!). This makes them invisible apart from a presence on your task bar - often the IE symbol followed by '-'. Most people aren't sensitive enough to their task bars to see them.

To get rid of them you need to right click the task bar icon and click close. However they'll then open a new popup window, which you have to quickly close with Ctrl+W before it's popup code can load.

Or get a popup killer

Bender_the_OffenderGOLD Member
still can't believe it's not butter
6,978 posts
Location: Melbourne, Australia


Posted:
erm yeas the pop-up killaz be nice - googlebar is an totalley recommended pop-up killer as it is soooo much useful too, as it also allows you to auto-translate things like the new Italian twirling/juggling phpnuke-clone site 'Giocoleria.org'

why doesn't ms exploder not have this essential utility? two words: celestine prophecy.
it is built in on the exploder you get with Windows Longhorn - but by that stage, the web browswer will be a hardware-accelerated z-buffered 3d layer (by 2005-06!) in the nearer term, tis feature of the longhorn IE will be implemented somewhat in a subsequent IE service pack..

in the meantime, try not launching astalavista at work/uni, k?

Laugh Often, Smile Much, Post lolcats Always


Astarmember
1,591 posts
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada.


Posted:
The cia is behind it all.

Seriously, it's all about thought inseration.

Bender_the_OffenderGOLD Member
still can't believe it's not butter
6,978 posts
Location: Melbourne, Australia


Posted:
ah... no it isn't
:silently marks astar on a MIB to-do list:

Laugh Often, Smile Much, Post lolcats Always


DioHoP Mechanical Engineer
729 posts
Location: OK, USA


Posted:
I second the recommendation to use Spybot - Search & Destroy.

A week or so ago I went to click a link and suddenly (like, literally as my mouse button descended on mid-click) a "do you want to install Lycos Sidesearch" popup appeared, with the "OK" button directly over the link I was going to click... needless to say I didn't get there in time and suddenly with no warning my computer started getting bombarded with popups. Needless to say I was quite pissed (and I had Ad-Aware installed and used it right beforehand!). I also got hit by a couple of viruses through those popups, which I had to take care of.

[edit to add image]
Here's a picture of my desktop after running Ad-Aware and then going to a meeting and coming back... my computer was so inundated with those that I couldn't run half my programs correctly until I restarted. Check out the taskbar!
[image]https://photos.digital-psyche.com/dbimage.php?dbimg=191[/image]

Getting SS&D really cleaned out my system, and whenever it isolated a file it told me what was up with it in language I could understand. I canot say enough good things about this program.

What hits the fan is not evenly distributed.


Astarmember
1,591 posts
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada.


Posted:
I just use opera and disable all the features that allow nasty invasive things to happen to my computer.

onewheeldaveGOLD Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,252 posts
Location: sheffield, United Kingdom


Posted:
I've been working on a post on security basics for PCs and have just posted it here: -

https://www.homeofpoi.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=006594

An issue with pop up stopping software is that it can sometimes make your system unstable; there's also a risk that it may have ad/spy ware programs with it.

Using zonealarm and Psylent_BoB's suggestion to increase your browsers security setting should eliminate almost all pop ups.

I manually alter my security settings depending on which site I'm on e.g. with HOP I know it won't have dodgy stuff so I use 'medium' (on 'high' some features don't work eg the time on posts), on sites I don't trust I'll set it to high.

"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."

--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32


Educate your self in the Hazards of Fire Breathing STAY SAFE!


borismcnorrisprofessional pedant
137 posts
Location: Bristol


Posted:
I use mozilla firebird as my browser and it atomatically kills all pop-ups except ones you specify. plus you get tabbed browsing (like netscape 7) which rules cos you get all your pages in one window

my $.02

A warrior always returns to the fray. He never does so out of stubbornness, but because he has noticed a change in the weather - Paulo Coelho


DentrassiGOLD Member
ZORT!
3,045 posts
Location: Brisbane, Australia


Posted:
i once got a pop-up window advertising anti pop-up window software.....

"Here kitty kitty...." - Schroedinger.


Jelloambiguous
646 posts
Location: Mpls, MN, USA


Posted:
I had some anti pop up software once upon a time, only problem is it prevented non pop up windows from opening, most importantly alot of musicians/dj's web pages where a seperate smaller flash webpage pops up. kind of annoying.

_________________________________
Fuzzy Dice.......................................


EeraBRONZE Member
old hand
1,107 posts
Location: In a test pit, Mackay, Australia


Posted:
At one point I was getting 150 popups a day, the site they came from used to be my fav but now I refuse to go back there, ended up letting ISO bugger around with my account and they got rid of them. Sometimes I love those geeks.

There is a slight possibility that I am not actually right all of the time.


King Of Bongoaddict
522 posts
Location: Berlin


Posted:
its the little aliens living inside your computer...
they like popups and pop-tarts.

Your life is ending one minute at a time...
So live it.



Similar Topics

Using the keywords [control * pop up *] we found the following existing topics.

  1. Forums > Who controls the pop-ups? [18 replies]

      Show more..

HOP Newsletter

Sign up to get the latest on sales, new releases and more...