Pop-Ups

[Hansard]

My new Yahoo Pop-Up ad blocker sends a pop-up to tell me it's foiled a pop-up ad!

Do I laugh or cry?

Can I get rid of them?

PS Have read the sticky on this subject, but these pop-ups aren't random, if you know what I mean. I have apparently signed up for a pop-up blocker that features pop-ups

[TimS]

I haven't laughed that much in ages !!! With your luck for Christ's sake don't buy a virus checker !!!

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Hansard,

I would drop the popup blocker and try running the Anti-Malware Programs regularly.

That should solve most of the popup problems.

Take Care,

Richard

[mazzy1026]

Hi Richard

I remember you mentioned to me once about malware and suggesting not using the Google bar to block popups.

How does a malware program (and what are they - where are they from) stop popups? I have SpyBot S&D for spyware and google bar for popups.

Regards

Maz

[Bre901]

Different questions, same answer :

both Opera and Mozilla are more resilient to malware generally speaking, and offer a much better privacy control (cookies, popups) than M$'s IE

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

mazzy1026,

One of the first indications something is wrong with the computer is a lot of popups. A program like Google Toolbar will stop those popups and therefore not give you the early warning something is wrong.

Malware is:

Adware - Designed solely to make money at your expense, Adware will pop random ads up when you least expect it. You'll be visiting Yahoo.com and all the sudden a porn banner will pop-up. Your child will be reading something on National Geographic's site and a bright blinking banner advertising an Internet Casino will appear.

These programs are hidden within Windows, but will do major damage. Granted they rarely hurt your PC permanently, but they will slow it down and make it almost unusable most of the time. The programs are often memory and CPU hogs and are poorly coded, so your PC usually becomes unstable.

Spyware - Most people use "Adware" and "Spyware" synonymously, but I consider Spyware to be a more intelligent version of Adware. Spyware is the nastier of the two, and will collect personal data about your PC and your habits in order to make even more money. Advertisers make more money when you are interested in the ads, so Spyware collects information about your Internet browsing habits in order to sell this information for more dough. For example, if you visit car sites a lot, the random ads will be car ads. This way they'll also seem more fitting so people won't question the ads as much. It's believed that Spyware designers also sell these habits to retailers in order to gather demographics.

Spyware and Adware can both hide themselves many ways. The most common is to load at Windows' startup and stay resident in system memory. Some Spyware will appear on the navigation bar in Internet Explorer and since most people cannot figure out how to remove it, they will be stuck with it even if it's right in front of them. Still, other users won't even notice the navigation bar. This type is generally the worst when it comes to slowing a PC down.

Take Care,

Richard

[mazzy1026]

Cheers Richard

So the google bar will block things that you should be aware of - kind of covering up the problem rather than getting rid of it. Would it be sensible then to completely clean your PC of spy/malware, then use appropriate techniques to stop it from being installed (such as spyware blaster by Javacools) and THEN install the google bar - thus preventing everything?

Regards

Maz

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

mazzy1026,

...kind of covering up the problem rather than getting rid of it.

That is exactly it.

Take Care,

Richard

[Timothy]

Going back to the first post, the two things that leave me gasping for breath are:

Timothy