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General discussion

pop up ads in mozilla

Aug 10, 2005 11:19AM PDT

i never used to get pop ups in mozilla. now i get them all the time. just got a nasty one in fact. motivated me to write to the fourm.

any tips on getting rid of them?

thanks,

richard

Discussion is locked

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sorry...
Aug 10, 2005 11:22AM PDT

but firefox is the actual browser.

richard

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Some of the newer popups. . .
Aug 11, 2005 7:52AM PDT

are done with Flash. Popup blockers don't see the new window as a popup, just a flash movie. Spyware Blaster has a Flash blocker setting that will effectivly block these popups. If indeed they are Flash. Unfortunately it also blocks any Flash presentation.

Wayne

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Spyware...
Aug 11, 2005 8:08AM PDT

Since they started appearing all at once and in full force (including "nasty" ones), I'm betting it's due to adware/spyware on your system. Try running the standard scans with Microsoft AntiSpyware (if you have Windows 2000/XP), SpyBot, and AdAware, all of which are free. If any unwanted guests are currently camping in your PC, these programs should find and remove them.

Hope this helps,
John

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thanks
Aug 11, 2005 8:24AM PDT

i have all the programs you suggested, but have not done deep scans with microsoft anti spyware or ad aware. but i will try those.

thank you very much for the tip.

richard

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(NT) i should mention as i think about it...
Aug 11, 2005 8:26AM PDT

that most of my pop ups come when i log onto drudgereport.com. don't know why, but that's mostly when they occur.

richard

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It's the site...
Aug 11, 2005 8:47AM PDT

I went to the site and received a pretty advanced ad for an online college, and was told that some popups were supressed as well. After turning the blocker off and refreshing the page a few time I received 3 more ads for various products/companies, but nothing nasty. It appears that's where your ads (at least a good portion of them) are coming from, and that they've figured out how to beat the default popup blocker.

You could try using a third-party popup blocker, such as Pop-Up-Stopper Free, but I'm not sure how well they work, as I haven't had the need for such programs since switching to Firefox. (This is the first time I encountered ads it didn't block automatically.)

Hope this helps,
John

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for some odd reason...
Aug 11, 2005 12:38PM PDT

i have maintained drudgereport.com as my homepage. now the pop ups are pornographic. i'm done with it. i hope that will end my pop up problem. better places to get real news on the net anyway.

richard

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popups
Aug 14, 2005 4:38PM PDT

The built-in popup blocker in Firefox is pretty good but there are a couple of further steps that can be taken to stop them appearing. One is to use an extension called 'NoScript'. Popups need JavaScript enabled in the browser to work. NoScript disables JavaScript. However, trusted sites that need JavaScript to run properly (like this one) can be added to a 'whitelist'. Full description here:

http://www.noscript.net/whats

Another measure could be to make use of the Windows 'hosts' file. You can read how this might help by typing 'hosts file' into a search engine.

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popups
Aug 15, 2005 8:54AM PDT

Would those work for a Mac or just PC?

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popups
Aug 15, 2005 9:52AM PDT

I'm not sure if NoScript would work with a Mac. I notice there is a contact link on the NoScript site, so perhaps you could ask the author about that.

It looks as if you could certainly make use of a hosts file though:

http://accs-net.com/hosts/hostsformac.html