Cookies from Drudge or FreeRepublic?

My Computer | 11/1/02 | Self

[Positive]

On any regular day I will go to Drudge then come to FreeRepublic, I've been doing this for years now.

Lately, when I move from one to the other I get a full screen pop-up taking me to a site called WWW.SpyOnYou.com. It always seems to occur after I click on my link to FR while on Drudge or vice versa.

I've searched for cookies and sure enough I find one - then I delete it - then later the popup occurs again - and the cookie is back.

Any ideas on how to skip this part of my internet experience?

[Constitutional Patriot]

bump

[mickie]

I tried to download ADWare.......but it was too complicated for me.
And I hate those 'pop-ups'
I'm a real novice!

[airedale]

You need something to stop the pop-ups. I use Ad/Subtract Pro but there are a lot of others. Earthlink provides something free for their customers. There are lots of other software (freeware and shareware and purchase). Ad/Subtract Pro gives you very good control over cookies and the ability to selectively delete them. It can block all ads and a lot of other stuff. If you have Zone Alarm Pro for a firewall it will also block most pop-ups/unders (it's in the custom settings for the privacy options and needs to be turned on. It will also block some other ads). Ad/Subtract regularly updates it’s database of ads which is an important feature in continuing to block ads.

You also need to remove all the spyware from your system. Ad-Aware is free and a great start and it’s free. By itself it’s not enough. To supplement it get Spy-bot which is also free. It finds other types of spyware and nasties (Trojans, dialers, other bots, etc.). They do overlap a bit but they do enough that’s different that you should have both. I also have the paid version of Pest Patrol (the free version will just locate the pests but won’t remove them. You have to do it manually. The paid version cleans them.). This software overlaps both Spybot and Ad/Aware. I have all three and it’s really a bit of over kill. The only advantage is that Pest Patrol has a memory resident function that constantly scans your system to catch spyware and other more serious pests before they can do much.

All of these need to be kept current. I run them in this order: Ad/Subtract to clear unwanted cookies, history and material in my cache. Then Ad-Aware to find cookies that were missed by Ad-Subtract (some are pretty sneaky). Then I run either Spy-bot or Pest Patrol. Usually Spy-bot. I run those weekly. Once a month I run all 3. The reason for running them in this order makes it easier to determine what you want to keep. Ad/Subtract protects the cookies you want to keep (FreeRepublic’s for example since it keeps you logged in. If you wipe it out you have to log in to post.)

[SpaceBar]

For Unix platforms this is an excellent choice. Works like a charm.

[Blue Screen of Death]

You can go to pcmag.com and get a utility called CookieCop2. It really gives you a lot of control over popups and cookies and a whole bunch of other goodies. It is a bit technical, so if you think a proxy server is a blond waitress, you might want to skip it.

[listenhillary]

Cookies? I've been coming to Free Republic for 3 years, I've never got any cookies. Nary a crumb!

All I've gotten is nasty looks from the wife, carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis and bleary eyes.

[Lancey Howard]

You should skip Drudge, he's the culprit.

That's my opinion, too.
Recently when I went over to Drudge, I ended up in a pop-up "loop". As soon as I 'x'ed out of one pop-up, the other would reappear, back and forth, back and forth, endlessly. I finally had to go off-line to get rid of them. A few times I went to Drudge and the site was so plastered over with full-screen pop-ups, I thought I had clicked the wrong bookmark or something. After 'x'ing out of two of these full-screeners I finally spotted the Drudge site underneath it all. At that point I only had to get rid of a smaller pop-up to read Drudge's page. On two occasions I went to Drudge and my computer froze up.
That's when I got rid of my Drudge bookmark. I don't go there anymore. I have never had any problem with any other site even remotely close to the problems I had at Drudge. It's curious because I never had any similiar problems with Drudge since I started visiting his site daily in January 1998. The problems began there (for me) a couple of months ago. Now I figure if Drudge comes up with something good, it will end up here at FR anyway.

[DB]

I would strongly suggest you have another hidden application running on your system that is doing this. This hidden application could be reporting anything you do on your computer.

I'm not running anything special and do not have any pop-ups when going to or from Drudge and FR.

[the_Watchman]

This may be a legitimate message from IE5. You might take the text of the message and search the Microsoft site and see if you wind up in their knowledge base.

The messages I am describing have ONLY the OK button which closes the box. My son pointed out that for pop-up windows in general, it probably is not safe to close them with either the OK button OR the 'X' in the upper right corner. He always closes them by right-clicking on the item in the launch bar (usually at the bottom, unless you've moved it). This is probably the safest way to make sure that Windows is actually closing the window. It clearly is not safe to use the buttons within the window no matter what they say. An application can bind any procedure to any button.

[GOPJ]

bump for later

[SupplySider]

I have the exact same problem. I clear out all my cookies, temp files and browser cache with OnTrack SystemSuite, then run AdAware. I go back online with a pop-up remover active (currently using AdMuncher). I still get that awful SpyOnYou window popping up, as well as a couple of other X-rated ones. I also wondered about Drudge and FR, as it has hit me after visiting only those two sites after cleaning my system.

If anyone has a cure please post it!

[general_re]

Download and install this (10.9 MB)

:^)

[Jorge]

I installed Norton's Personal Firewall yesterday. It has a "stop the pop-ups" feature. So far, so good.

Norton Antivirus software came with my computer.

The day my subscription to online updates ran out..it began interupting me online repeatly with annoying reminders that my antivirus software was out of date and I needed "purchase" updates.

I ignored these "reminders", and closed them everytime they appeared.

Within a few weeks these Norton "reminders" turned into warnings, in shocking red colors telling me my computer wasn't properly protected and I needed to purchase Norton updates!

I ignored them..though I was getting irritated and considered deleting all Norton software from my computer.

But I didn't.
Before long the Norton program started producing these pop-up alarms...telling me that it had detected files infected with viruses on my computer but wasn't able to neutralize them because my Norton Antivirus program was not up to date.

I found this pretty amazing since the entire time my Norton Antivirus program was paid for and up to date...it didn't find a single infected file on my computer.

So I located and checked out the files that Norton was warning me about...and I found they contained no virus..in fact... contained no data at all. Nothing. They were always empty files.
I simply deleted these files Norton said it couldn't handle...pretty easy ...OK?

I had this happen a few times, and am convinced that the Norton Antivirus program generated these files and claimed they were infected in order to scare me into purchasing updates it claimed I needed to handle this "virus"...since I didn't respond to it's initial sales pitch.

I considered reporting them for deceptive business practices.
Anybody else have this experience with Norton?

[Nogbad]

Bump

[timestax]

bumped for later...