Why am I getting pop-ups

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

Thanks. I just checked and all the important ones are not killed. Thanks.

To all: With Windows or Windows XP especially, and are sick of all the pop ups Click Here

[Woodman]

Just for clarity, those are not really po-ups. They are Network messages that some spammers have decided to use as a covert message delivery system. I turn off hte service because I find it anoying. To be honest I didn't even know it was being used for spamming because I would never have gotten the messages. If you are on a network where you need htese messages, don't turn it off. The messgaes tha will be blocked are things like "so and so server out of disk space" or "such and such printer has finished a print jog" or whatever a sys admin may consider important for the network users to know.

[Woodman]

Time for bed.... I'm having terrible sticky/dyslexic key syndrome.

[Brad’s Gramma]

Bumping for MORE info. I am MOST SICK of this mess.

What I'd like to know is when did everyone else start getting these? Mine started Saturday night. I was fine all day, then was hit that night. So much so, that I can't even use that computer. They came in so fast and furious you couldn't read a page here on FR.

I had ONLY FR open.

Yes, I clean the cache, the whole enchilada, after EACH SESSION online. Faithfully. I'm running Win. 98.

I REALLY REALLY resent this. My grandson can't even use the net now due to the nature of these things.

[Keith in Iowa]

It's Spyware/Adbots - junk that gets put on your computer just by visiting web sites - see the advice above about two programs - AdAware, and Spyware Search and Destroy.

[k2blader]

*reminders to self*

Update Adaware...

Check out this Spybot thingy...

[Keith in Iowa]

Ooops..That's Spybot Search & Destroy...

[Brad’s Gramma]

Thanks.

[alnick]

If you have IE 6, you can select View and then select Privacy Report. You will get a list. You can right click each entry in the list and select Always Reject Cookies from this Site. That should prevent future cookies from some of the ad sites.

[Brad’s Gramma]

So if I go to the "infected" computer (not this one), and do that, will it show the sites that have blessed me with their ads? Even THOUGH I'VE CLEARED THE COOKIES?

[alnick]

It will show you which cookies any given web page has.

For instance, if I do it on this page, I only see two Free Republic cookies, which I do not want to block. If I go to the drudge report site, it will list several cookies, several of which are ads.

Since I don't want any Drudge cookies, I just block them all.

Some sites may have some cookies that you want and some that you don't, so you can choose each one accordingly.

[The South Texan]

bump for later reference

[Brad’s Gramma]

Thanks again. I'll gather the courage to turn that other computer on, tomorrow and do what you're suggesting. This one, so far, hasn't been affected. Which leads me to believe.....heck, I don't know what it leads me to believe.

Ha!

[lorrainer]

Bump for later

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks, I will download it sometime this week.

Any hints about the download or use of it.

[RedWhiteBlue]

I did not have any problems downloading or installing Spybot, and I have never had a conflict running it along with other programs at the same time.

As far as actually using Spybot, I think the user interface could be a little better, but it really isn't too bad.

As far as I recall, the first time I opened it up, it went straight to the options page so that I could change the default settings by checking or unchecking boxes, but I left it just as it was. Along the left side of the window are a series of vertical boxes that contain the main menu options. Just click on those and you will see what they are for in the main window.

Choosing the first option at the top left box will let you run spybot. After you make the choice to scan your files, it will pull up a long list of files, cookies, register entries, etc. The ones marked with RED checks are the ones you need to get rid of. There will also be some marked with a neutral color (can't remember what that is), and some marked with green, which is OK. An example of the ones marked with green are generally tracking programs that are from friendly programs in your computer that are helpful and cannot be accessed by an outsider, like perhaps when you are working in Microsoft Word and you do a "file" "open" command and it shows you the last 5 files you worked on to make it easier for you to find the file you might want to open.

Anyway, I ignore all of the neutral and friendly files and leave all of the red ones checked. Along the bottom of the window there will be more options, including one that says something like "fix problems." Click it and they'll be gone.

Then Spybot will bring you to another page where it will innoculate your computer to prevent it from downloading problem items again. That is new, and Adaware can't do anything like this at all. I can't remember how this page works but I do not remember having any trouble doing it. Seems to me like it warned me that I needed 257 innoculations and it had me press a button that said "innoculate now" (or something like that) and then it had me press another button. But it was fairly easy.

Then, every time you run Spybot, it will remind you to update. It is easy. If it doesn't push you to the update feature after the warning, just go to the "online" option, and click the "update" box, where it will show you all of the updates available since the last time you updated. Check the boxes, click update, and you are good to go. You won't have to reboot your computer or anything.

Good luck!

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for all the data. I will download Spybot this week.

[Nick Danger]

It sounds as if some webpage has placed a cookie on your computer. Try cleaning out your cookies folder.

If cleaning out your cookies folder makes you feel better, go ahead and do it. But please don't tell people that this is somehow going to prevent pop-ups, because it won't.

Cookies are not programs. They cannot "make things happen." They are just little snippets of text. A web site you visit can query your browser and retrieve a cookie it previously sent you, but that's all it is.

Windows allocates memory and opens a new window when it gets told to do so by an executing program. That's the only way it can happen. Usually the "executing program" is the browser itself... it hits a web page that has JavaScript on it that says, "Open a new browser window and tell it to fill itself with the stuff at this URL." That's how the pop-ups at Drudge happen.

A more insidious form of this tells the browser to open a new window with no frame, no controls, of size 1-by-1, up in the corner somewhere, and fill that with stuff from such-and-such URL. The "stuff" turns out to be more JavaScript, that hides in this nearly invisible -- but open and running -- browser window. It's job is to sleep for random intervals, make a pop-up every time it awakens, and then go back to sleep. If you have one of these things running, it will look like pop-ups are coming from nowhere, or FR, or wherever you happen to be when Mr. Invisible Window wakes up.

Note that the usual "adware scrubbers" cannot catch these. They aren't identifiable as separate executable programs; they look like an instance of IE or Netscape, because they are. Almost any site you visit can launch one of these windows on your machine. The only defense is to turn off JavaScript, AKA "Active Scripting."

The really insidious offenders are the executable programs -- adware -- that "come free" with things like KaZaa. The danger with executables is that you don't know what else they are doing besides opening pop-ups. They could be doing anything. Everybody should get one of those scrubbers, and run it at least once a week.

[Aggie Mama]

Mine started up about a week ago. I'm so glad for this thread. My home page is FR and I couldn't figure out why I kept getting popups.

[hsmomx3]

Be careful here as about two months ago I followed those instructions and just the other day, the pop-ups were back. Somehow, the settings were reset and I had to redo them. Those instructions are good to have just in case you need to redo the settings. WinXP has the system set to accept these pop-ups and of course, they never tell you about this so I had to find out the hard way.