The thread wandered a bit
fobotsco into spyware. And then into popup killers that may be spyware and then into anti-spyware and some anti-spyware that may be spyware itself. And then into active and passive anti-spyware
AdAware was accused of and defended from being spyware. It doesn't have anything to do with popups.
Of course, simply disabling JavaScript stops them all.