You’re very welcome, LG.
It’s good to be skeptical! Some of these pop-ups will download malware or perhaps just get info off your computer (IP address) if you click on them. I never click on these and am careful about what sites I go to. Quite a few FReepers have mentioned adding adblock. I get frustrated on some site like Breitbart with all the ads, so I’m going to look into it. I hate the sites that you have to answer a question before you can read the content. IIRC most are sponsored/hosted by google and I suspect that google is using their analytics program. I’ve gotten to the point that I’m not going to answer the questions any longer. That reminds me, I need to delete most of my cookies.
Multiple times per day, I delete all cookies but the one for FR (which would end the login session); and I have my browsers set to delete all cookies whenever the browser is closed. In addition to improving privacy, this resets the counters for various news web sites that only allow you to read a certain number of articles for free. I also set the browser options to disallow third-party cookies, since these have almost no function but spying.