Pop up ads

Mike McCarty · 10-01-2003, 04:51 PM

I have AOL as my Internet Service Provider, my operating system is Windows XP, I am a Scorpio, my home state is Texas and my favorite fruit is the avocado.

Like a lot of people I get slammed by pop up ads every day. A couple of weeks ago I was rooting around and discovered something. From Windows bottom left you see the "Start" icon with the multicolored window, I clicked on this and then the "all programs" button. I began to see a lot of things that I had never knowingly used and never remember installing. They were, I believe, programs that were either pre-installed (maybe, but I doubt it) or had been placed into my machine by the pop up spammers while I was on-line (could this be?).

I deleted five or seven of these things, you'll know them when you see them. One actually said "by de-installing this you will be putting people out of work." For the last two weeks I have been conspicuously free of these pop up ads! Also, my computer boots up about three times faster!

Stanka Kordic · 10-01-2003, 06:35 PM

Holy Moly!

Thanks Mike. What a difference it made here too!

Heidi Maiers · 10-02-2003, 01:36 AM

Hi Mike,

I too despise the pop ups and have found a handy little program to get rid of these annoying little pests.

You need to be extremely careful, however, when uninstalling any unrecognized programs in your programs list. You might inadvertently uninstall a program you need because you didn't recognize it. Also, programs should always be removed by using the Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs icon, or the program's uninstall utility and never by just highlighting a folder and deleting it.

Anyway, pop ups occur from code written into the web pages you visit and the pop up stoppers disallow those snippets of code to execute. I have been using this free program for years that runs on startup, can be easily turned on or off if you want, and stops all pop up windows from occurring unless you want to allow a window to open (just hold the Shift or Control key down when you click).

You can download this software "Pop-Up Stopper FREE edition" from this page:http://www.panicware.com/product_downloads.html

Mike McCarty · 10-02-2003, 09:55 AM

Thanks for that good info Heidi.

There was one in particular that I remember: "GATOR applications." I can remember this name "gator" being attached to so many of these pop-ups. When I saw it in my program list it didn't even hide the fact that it was a pop-up generator.

None of the ones that I uninstalled tried to hide what they were in their description. But there is so much "stuff", without going through the list with specific purpose you could go years and never discover what these things actually were. Can you tell me how these programs got into my computer? Do you think they were preinstalled, or placed there while I was on line?

Heidi Maiers · 10-02-2003, 10:34 AM

Strange - I've never heard of an install that generates pop ups, but am not surprised. I don't have AOL, so it may either be an AOL thing, factory install (doubt that), or most likely, these little programs get installed while you are surfing the web unknowingly.

The best protection you can have to prevent these sorts of intrusions are to get yourself some antivirus software such as Norton or McAfee that include firewall services. When you enable their firewalls, nothing can communicate with your system without your permission and you will be able to block these sneaky downloads.(In addition to blocking any virus threats, of course). The programs are only about $30 and well worth it. If you already have either of these running, open up their GUI and check to see if the firewalls are installed and enabled.

Heidi Maiers · 10-03-2003, 04:14 PM

Mike, I was curious about what Gator was and did a little research. Here's what I found out:
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Most surfers

Mike McCarty · 10-03-2003, 04:59 PM

Good work Heidi,

This is for sure the under belly of capitalism. Maybe after we rid ourselves of the dinner time phone calling parasites we can turn our attention to these dirt bags.

I know these compainies keep statistics on all sorts of things. I would like to see the average elapse time between when the ad pops up and when it is clicked off. I'll bet it's in the nano second range. And I bet if you asked them they would claim not to keep that sort of information. If the people paying for these ads got this info they may not be so quick to continue.