I don't mind when there are ads in a webpage, but I HATE popup ads. They clutter my desktop and get in my way! Does anyone know of a good way to get rid of, or at least reduce the number of them?

There are some sites that can get rid of pop-ups but the ones that I know cost money. I am sure that there are free sites. Pop-ups are the equivelant of computer tele-marketers to me.

For those of you who use AOL, get AOL 8.0...it has an automatic pop-up blocker that you can turn on or off.

It also has spam block, where anything that you think is junk mail, you smack it with the spam block and you won't ever get it again.

I just got 8.0 today, and I must say...what took me so long?

There are parts of the FT site that show pop-ups in order to make some revenue. I'd think this all helps to keep the site running. Perhaps it is not in FT's interest to talk about ways of blocking them.

I've heard of previous threads regarding popup ads being deleted for the reason mentioned by tellywellies. I think it is best to terminate this discussion.

Maybe if FT's pop ups were less annoying I wouldn't've minded them so much. One of them the only way I could close it was by pressing crtl+alt+delete. It's possible that it was caused by adware so I can't be sure FT is the source but it's really nasty.

Google's new toolbar is really cool, by the way.

I get pop-ups that get rid of all the IE controls on the window, disable the close function, and start to download all sorts of software.

They pop up even when I'm online but not using a browser. And I have no @!#?@! idea where to start to look on my computer to get rid of any nasty seeds that may have been planted.

One of the more insideous ones installs a dialer to an international ISP, disconnects your current modem, then tries to call on the new dialer via a pay-per-minute line.

Sometimes, IE takes 5 minutes to start up because it's reading though so much garbage that been snuck in.

And recently, I've had one that manipulates my pull-down menus for me.

(That's it. Rant over.)

Tony - use adaware. I used to get the popups when I wasn't online either as well. Downloaded adaware and ran it, fine now - no popups anymore!

Edit to add: Adaware is NOT a pop-up blocker program. It finds malicious programs that have been put onto your computer system by downloading shareware programs and visiting 'malicious' sites. It will not stop normal adverts from websites like Geocities, Funtrivia or Tripod.

Here's the website: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

Adware, Spybot etc are excellent little programs for finding programs installed on your PC, and I suggest if you're on the net, you should run one of these programs once in a while. They will get rid off off-line pop-ups quite well. Just be careful what you ask these programs to remove. Some free applications do require advertising pop-ups to survive and deleting the spyware (which you probably gave the program permission to install) will cause the program not to operate. Kazaa is a good example.

I installed Adwareagent the other day. It was meant to work as a preventative maintenance and block spyware programs before being installed. The result was I couldn't access dedicated internet gaming servers and it took me hours to reverse. Very frustrating.

As for on-line pop-ups two good popper stoppers come to mind, Smart Popup Killer and Stopzilla are both excellent as you can set them to allow information pop-ups from trusted sites i.e. Funtrivia, but stop anything from unknown sources/sites.

Bertho - Instead of Kazaa, I installed Kazaa-lite. It doesn't contain any of the spyware programs.

Well I've been using Opera Browser instead of Internet Explorer for two years now and I don't remember what a pop-up look like.

You cna use Mozilla FireBird to block popups, and can allow popups from selected sites.

I don't like Opera because I find it just too flashy, with a whole lot of buttons and toolbars and sidebars that seem to be meant for distracting people. I also don't like that advertisemant bar. The only positive feature about it seems to be that the display is more stable than other browsers, and it supports almost all tags. I prefer the simple layout of FireBird.

(Sorry, tellywellies, for getting off the topic! )

In practice, will those who learn about pop-up blocking utilities from this thread be willing to let any pop-ups show, even those of FunTrivia?

Back to my original post:

Quote:

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There are parts of the FT site that show pop-ups in order to make some revenue. I'd think this all helps to keep the site running. Perhaps it is not in FT's interest to talk about ways of blocking them.

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Sorry, tellywellies. Let's stop this discussion...

Opera in my opinion is a better browser, infact I don't think its a browser but 'make your own browser tool kit'. The extra bars can be easily removed from file>preferences. And there's no problem with cookies eather.
I hope discussing a web-browser won't stop the money from oming into funtrivia.

Nothing wrong with discussing browsers. Alternatives to IE is something that gets discussed here at length from time to time. I'm a Mozilla Firebird person myself but also have Opera installed. I find either of them preferable to Internet Explorer.

I would think that there are probably many more thousands of members/visitors at QLand, where the pop-ups are, than those who come to read this thread about how to disable pop-ups....

I read this as an informative discussion of "existing or emerging technology", which is what this forum is about...

Ok, I'm off to start a thread on browsers, where we all will try as hard as we can to stay away from the issue of popup stoppers...

Just a different tack. I installed the latest free Google toolbar 2 at the top of my web pages. This has a pop up stopper on the bar which you can switch on and off then and there, allowing things to function if you want them, or stopping the annoyance. Saves having to mess about with settings anyway or installing specific programs.