A few months ago, those gray-box IE Messenger pop-ups were driving a lot of us crazy, but it turned out that there was an easy fix for home users. Since last night, my computer's been besieged by a new kind of pop-up, or at least by what seems to be a new kind of pop-up: Ads and download offers, one after another, in seemingly endless loops, even when I'm not actively on-line (my DSL connection is on, but I'm not surfing). It was really unbelievable: As a result of this unending bombardment, my computer was becoming virtually unusable, and just keeping up with unwanted software downloads that continually re-installed themselves was taking up my whole morning. So I downloade a pop-up blocker - AdsGone Pop-Up Killer - and at least it's possible for me to work again, though I'm getting frequent IE errors, and though an occasional ad still sneaks all or part of the way through. Am I the only one having this problem? If not, then how the Hell can THEY be getting away with this? I started making a list of the companies whose products were being advertised, and sent off some angry e-mails to them: One is called, ironically enough, "A Better Internet": They sell various utilities supposedly intended to improve your surfing. Another is called "Realcastmedia," and it looks like it might actually be the culprit. A third group - the main source of several unwanted programs - was offering "memory blaster" and "speed blaster" software. A fourth, apparently associated with various casino type programs, unless it was related to the third, or part of the Realcastmedia ad-pushing set-up, installed several ad-server programs, including one called "Pop." When I uninstalled it, I was sent to a web page with a questionnaire on why I didn't like the program: Uh, maybe because it was linked to one of the most annoying experiences I've had since I started using the Internet? I think the unwanted installations started when I accidentally clicked on the wrong part of one page among several that were thrown at me. I'm not sure. According to the pop-up killer, since I installed it a few hours ago, it's already blocked over 200 ads and almost 1700 servers... Insane. Can that really be accurate? Sheesh. Anyone got any fixes other than the pop-up blocking software...
#1 - Download and run SpyBot - http://www.safer-networking.org/ #2 - Download and run AdAware - http://www.adaware.com This will solve your problems
Remove the software the causes popups. I hightly recomment Spybot. http://beam.to/spybotsd After you install it, the install it, click on "search for updates" and download the updates. Then click on "search and destroy" First I'd go into the control panel, and into Add/Remove Program and remove the software which you know you didn't install or use. If you're not sure was a piece of software does, and think it's junk/adware you can do a search for it at: http://www.junkwareinfo.com That should kill your popups, unless you're surfing websites, and they are programmed to generate a popup ad. For that I'd recommend the popup stopper from http://www.panicware.com
Thanks much for the SpyBot recommendation. Seems to have cut down substantially on the number of ads that the AdsGone software has to deal with. Got to love a piece of freeware that works efficiently. Plus it was a great pleasure to be DESTROYING the things that were giving me so much trouble. Amazing how many of those stupid tracking cookies and registry add-ons and so forth were sticking around on this computer. You almost have to wonder if the pop-ups are designed by the same people who sell the ad-blocker software. Over the years, I've suffered a couple of virus infections. This was worse. I consider myself moderately computer-savvy - I'm the kind of guy that the totally befuddled turn to before they seek professional help - but for a while there I was feeling overwhelmed. If this attack had occurred on a trading day, I would have hit the roof. I can almost imagine how pop-ups in small doses might be an effective advertising tool, but the kind of thing that happened to me would seem self-defeating. I wonder if there's some critical mass of bots and cookies and so on that result in what I went through, or if I just hit upon some extremely aggressive pop-up generator. Who would be the target customer for such a thing? And I wonder why this phenomenon hasn't achieved a higher profile - or if just has to get a little worse, or move into the next generation of anti-anti-bot technology.
also go to http://www.wilderssecurity.com. and get spyware blaster - this runs like a virus checker and will prevent any new infections/ trojan installs etc. The Spybot search and destroy will clean things up great, but doesn't monitor continuously. For regular pop up killing, I recommend the Beta version of the google toolbar. Put it up by the IE toolbar, and it takes up no more screen space. Excellent, free, and you can easily allow a pop up (for your regular sites etc) either on a one off or every time basis.... I guess you already have a firewall like ZoneAlarm.... coops ps the Spyware blaster has a Lookup blaster aswell, if you want to automatically empty all look up lists, temp internet files etc. Also has a bonus app. - a FLASH killer. Turn it on and it will stop any tedious bullsh!t flash animations, AND it will prevent Macromedia from pestering you to install the damn software..... (if they haven't already got you...)