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If
you believe the e-mail
we receive here at
aroundmaine.com,
pop-ups, those intrusive
additional windows
you have to close
en-masse after you
finish an intensive
browsing session,
are a real irritant.
Even more annoying
are the ones that
pop up unbidden when
you’re not
even using the Internet.
To help with some
of the confusion
and irritation, here’s
a little guide to
pop-up ads and what,
if anything, you
can do about them.
Putting a pop-up
window in a web site
is extraordinarily
easy for a web designer
to do. We use windows
here at aroundmaine.com
sometimes to present
content in a special
window of fixed size,
outside of our normal
design. We never
use pop-ups for advertising,
though. If you think
you’re seeing
pop-up advertising
from aroundmaine.com,
you may have another
problem, which we’ll
get to in a little
bit.
A number of people
have written software
to suppress pop-up
advertisements. The
one I use most is EMS
FreeSurfer. EMS Freesurfer is
freeware, so anyone
can use it at no
cost. If you try
it and like it, you
might send a few
bucks to the folks
who made it. That
might encourage them
to make another version.
It has options that
allow you to just
stop ads, or to make
sure you have only
one browser window
open at all times.
You can lock your
home page, so that
those pesky sites
that are always trying
to change yours can’t
do that. There’s
even a panic button,
so if you’re
in pop-up window
hell, where every
window you close
opens three more,
one click will close
everything. I’ve
been using this for
a few weeks, it has
worked great and
I can’t really
say I’ve missed
that X-10 camera
ad a whole lot.
Our friends at TechTV
have an excellent article on
this stuff and where
it comes from.
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Just this week I’ve
received a couple
of e-mails like this: “Why
do you have all those
pop-ups ads on your
site?” In fact
there are NO pop-up
ads on my site, but
that doesn’t
mean this person
wasn’t seeing
some. They might
have been the victim
of spyware or adware.
Spyware
or adware are little
programs
that either send
additional ads to
your computer or
collect information
on the sites you
visit or both. They
often come from downloaded
programs. Some commonly
downloaded programs,
like file sharing
applications, come
bundled with these
things. Other times
web sites are programmed
to install them into
your computer. How
many times have you
been asked to download
something called, “Gator” or “Comet
Cursor?”
It's also easy
to just click "yes" without
reading the box,
but doing so could
invite even more
pop-up ads .
What you might not know about these applications is they can collect
information on the sites you visit and send that information back to
persons unknown on the Internet. Also, by taking up processing time on
your computer and requesting unnecessary advertising from their servers,
both the Internet and your computer system can really slow down.
Sometimes these
programs are touted
as “Browser
enhancements”,
but what they really
do is provide more
pop-up ads, even
to sites that don’t
normally feature
pop-up ads.
The solution to
this problem is another
download. The one
I recommend most
frequently is Ad-Aware;
another freeware
application.
Ad-Aware will scan
your system for known
spyware and adware
applications as well
as ad-tracking cookie
files, deposited
by companies that
track ads across
sites. It then displays
a list of those files
it found on your
computer and, if
you give the go-ahead,
expunges them from
your system. It is
possible that deleting
adware located by
a program like Ad-Aware
can disable the functionality
of some other programs,
like your file-sharing
program. However,
if you're willing
to put up with the
additional ads to
run the program,
you can just re-download
it.
Another popular
free spyware remover
is Spybot Search
and Destroy from
PepinMK software.
It has more features
than Ad-Aware, but
is a little more
complicated to use.
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Messenger Service Spam: You don't even have to be surfing to get this
one on Windows NT, 2000, or XP
Finally the last kind of pop-up is the kind that doesn’t care if
you have a web browser open at all. It’s that little gray box with
an “OK” button on it that can come up anytime your computer
is connected to the Internet, no matter what you’re doing. It’s
not a virus and your system isn’t being hacked and above all it’s
not coming from Road Runner or Time Warner Cable. Microsoft put the messenger
capability into Windows 2000 to allow network administrators to widely
broadcast their messages to their users. It is unrelated to the “MSN
Messenger” or “AOL Instant Messenger” you might use.
It wasn’t
long before the spammers
figured out this
was another way to
get their message
out, and started
sending unwanted
commercial messages.
This problem only
affects Windows 2000,
or Windows XP machines,
so if you recently
upgraded from Win98
these might be new
to you.
Stopping them is
as simple as changing
a check mark deep
in the guts of your
control panel. Here’s
the procedure for
Windows XP:
1. Right-click My Computer and choose Manage.
2. Go to Service and Applications and choose Services.
3. Double-click the Messenger entry.
4. Choose Disable as the Startup type.
5. Click Stop and Apply.
Our friends at TechTV
have an excellent
article on this stuff
and where it comes
from... click the
logo:
With a couple of
downloads, and a
tweak in configurations,
you should be able
to take care of most
of the unwanted pop-ups
that plague you.
Now if dealing with
Spam email were just
as easy…..
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