'Pop-up' firm seeks to block spyware act

Salt Lake Tribune ^ | 6/11/2004 | Glen Warchol

[FormerACLUmember]

Death to pop-up and spyware!!!

[Crazieman]

Death penalty for popup distributers and spammers.

[LooneyTick]

I would love to see the pop-ups go away, I have a slow dial-up and can't use Pop-up stopper, it takes so long for some pages to load.

[thoughtomator]

In the first of two days of testimony, lawyers for New York-based WhenU.com Inc. on Thursday tried to convince 3rd District Judge Joseph Fratto Jr. to delay the law's application at least until the legal objections are sorted out.

... under the ever-popular theory that laws do not take effect until judgislators have had their say.

[Constitution Day]

BUMP so maybe someone can tell me how to block that damn GAIN/Gator popup on my new computer.

I hate it!

[danneskjold]

WhenU maintains its advertising software, which is used by 21 million people each month, is only installed on computers with users' consent and does not gather private information.

If this where actually true, WhenU would go out of business for a lack of clients...

[B Knotts]

[Constitution Day]

That ain't happening. Thanks.

[Don W]

Get Spybot and Ad Aware and run them both (separately).

Run Spybot at least weekly thereafter, and Ad Aware daily.

It helps. A LOT!

That said, I ended up having to wipe my HD because I tried to manually remove gator and missed a few files. Reformatted and a NEW XP install, and no more problems.

[B Knotts]

Anyhow, I think AdAware removes that. I don't use Windows, but had to remove a bunch of junk from somebody else's computer, and it seemed to work fine.

[Publius6961]

WhenU offers computer users useful free software, such as weather monitors or screen savers, in exchange for allowing a "directory" program to be loaded onto their hard drives.

What a crock!
These slimebuckets expect to sell that argument in court? I know of no instance where they warn users that they are "... allowing a "directory" program to be loaded onto their hard drives." Fat chance of anyone allowing that, once they undestand fully what the consequences are.

[B Knotts]

Hey...you can't blame me for trying! :-)

Someday...the lure of the penguin...you will find it irresistable.

[JennysCool]

I agree with Drudge -- as much as I hate pop-ups, they are a miniscule nuisance compared to the havoc which will be wreaked if legislatures use people's hatred of them to have an excuse to begin regulating the 'Net. Grin, click the close box, and bear it. It could be a LOT worse.

[PAR35]

Anyuone who loads spyware on their machine has only themself to blame. Since pop-ups are so easy to block, anyone who gets them must want them.

[B Knotts]

Well, I sort of agree, but...these spyware companies are unethical in their approach. They trick people into installing their software, and then they do really rotten crap, like putting bogus entries in the hosts file, in order to keep the victim from being able to get to websites that offer decontamination software.

[Constitution Day]

I have nothing against Linux, but I'm using XP to dial into the office now.
Mainly it's a matter of TIME. I already know XP and don't have enough hours in the day to spend time w/ my family, work, eat, sleep and Freep.

Know what I mean?

[Constitution Day]

I have Spybot & Ad-Aware here @ work but haven't installed them yet. I'll give it a whirl.

Thanks!

[JoJo Gunn]

I'm one of those sometimes slow to change, but after a month I'm a firm believer in Firefox, because I can't remember one single pop-up since installing it.

Drudge, being a well known example, has three pop-ups nowadays on his site, but I never see them while using Firefox. This is better than any standalone pop-up blocker I've tried, including the Google toolbar and even the almost new Yahoo spyware blocking toolbar.

There's no need to throw IE away. I still use IE sometimes, such as with NOAA radar sites, which uses that dang Java. (I found Java for Firefox/Mozilla a crash prone mess, and do not recommend it).

I ask you to give it a try "straight out of the box" with sites that give you trouble.

[RedWhiteBlue]

I had problems with Gain/Gator. I could always tell when it was loaded without my consent onto my machine, because it would slow me down to a crawl. SpyBot Search and Destroy did a very good job in removing it, but soon I would go to a website that would put it back on my machine again. Since SpyBot added the "immunize" feature, I haven't had the problem again. So get SpyBot Search and Destroy, scan for and delete the spyware, and then click on the "immunize" button.