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Yes, it appears to be a Flash clip that open the pop-unders.. Internet Explorer's pop-up killer blocks these pop-unders, but Mozilla 1.0 with the Flash plugin does not. To avoid them, you can install the Flashblock plugin for Mozilla. It is also possible to bypass many of the pop-up blockers using a Java applet, but I think the advertisers avoid Java due to its slow initialization.

Yes, it appears to be a Flash clip that open the pop-unders.. Internet Explorer's pop-up killer blocks these pop-unders, but Mozilla 1.0 with the Flash plugin does not. To avoid them, you can install the Flashblock plugin for Mozilla. It is also possible to bypass many of the pop-up blockers using a Java applet, but I think the advertisers avoid Java due to its slow initialization.

On the other hand, the question is about windows. Here's the best freeware list I've found, taken off of the neowin.net forums. These are not guaranteed Clean, but most of them are. Also, you might want to check tinyapps.org, which specializes in SMALL apps (usually not enough space for ad/spyware).
Category 3D Graphics: ----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/CharacterCountF ilterForAValidList----
3Delight Free - http://www.3delight.com/index.htm
Anim8or - http://www.anim8or.com/
Aqsis - http://www.aqsis.com/
Blender - http://www.blender3d.org/
gmax - http://www.discreet.com/products/gmax/
Houdini (Free Edition) - http://www.sidefx.com/apprentice/index.html
Maya Personal Learning Ed. - http://www.alias.com/eng/products-services...ple/i ndex.shtml
Now3D - http://digilander.libero.it/giulios/Eng/homepage.h tm
OpenFX - http://www.openfx.org
SOFTIMAGE|XSI EXP - http://www.softimage.com/products/exp/v3/
Toxic - http://www.toxicengine.org/
Wings 3D - http://www.wings3d.com/
Category Anti-Virus:----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/Char acterCountFilterForAValidList----
AntiVir - http://www.free-av.com/
Avast - http://www.avast.com/i_idt_1018.html
AVG - http://www.grisoft.com/
ClamWin - http://www.clamwin.com/
Category Anti Spyware:----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/Charact erCountFilterForAValidList----
Ad-aware - http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/
Bazooka - http://www.kephyr.com/spywarescanner/index.html
Diet K - http://www.dietk.com/
SpyBot Search & Destroy - http://spybot.safer-networking.de/
SpywareBlaster - http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.htm l
SpywareGuard - http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareguard.html
Category IRC Clients:----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/Charact erCountFilterForAValidList----
BersIRC - http://www.bersirc.com/
BitchX - http://bitchx.org/download.php
HydraIRC - http://www.hydrairc.com/
TinyIRC - http://www.tinyirc.net/
XChat - http://www.silverex.org/news/
Category Audio Players:----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/Charact erCountFilterForAValidList----
1by1 - http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/~pesch
Billy - http://www.sheepfriends.com/?page=billy
CoolPlayer - http://coolplayer.sourceforge.net/
DeliPlayer. http://www.deliplayer.com/
Foobar 2

seriously, I wonder how long it is before they sue mcafee and others, just because of this point they want to make. Not that anyone will believe them.

I actually came across one that had an unistall utility, complete with a massive EULA for this uninstaller, and a license key for the uninstaller, which is emailed to you, if you decide to actuaslly trust them (description here, with company info) It's blackmail, of course, and probably not enforcable.

Legitiamte businessmen indeed.

In conjuntion with HijackThis, I use Process Explorer when supporting our customers. It's really invaluable for Killing Processes or Process Trees of spyware like Bubba.wintools that continually regenerate all of its files and registry entries if they are running.

It's sad that we went from caring about how cookies affect our privacy to frantically trying to keep our computers free of extremely persistant little programs that are free to do whatever they want with your data.

No, Spybot and AdAware are not enough.

I was plagued with problems for over a month (more like two). I ran both of these programs continuously and was never able to remove the problem completely. I would remove everything that was found by Spybot and AdAware, and it would seem clean--until I rebooted that is. The damn crap would reinstall itself when I would reboot.

I was pulling my hair out with this sh!t coming back constantly and thinking that I would have to do a complete reinstall.

What eventually worked: Bazooka

It tells you how to remove things manually (not for the layman, but no problem for the /.er) and is in-f*cking-credible. After about 8 weeks of hell, I found this and was able to remove all of the problem software within minutes. Plus, the software is free.
In case you were wondering, the app killing me the worst was WinPup . Grrrrr.

No, Spybot and AdAware are not enough.

I was plagued with problems for over a month (more like two). I ran both of these programs continuously and was never able to remove the problem completely. I would remove everything that was found by Spybot and AdAware, and it would seem clean--until I rebooted that is. The damn crap would reinstall itself when I would reboot.

I was pulling my hair out with this sh!t coming back constantly and thinking that I would have to do a complete reinstall.

What eventually worked: Bazooka

It tells you how to remove things manually (not for the layman, but no problem for the /.er) and is in-f*cking-credible. After about 8 weeks of hell, I found this and was able to remove all of the problem software within minutes. Plus, the software is free.
In case you were wondering, the app killing me the worst was WinPup . Grrrrr.

..the text file is true, but you could go to the WildTangent Control Panel, which had buttons to access the agreements/info. I guess everybody was more interested in frothing off at the mouth when AdAware added it. However, a lot of the problem seems to have come from HP shipping WT stealthily installed on their Windows builds--maybe they removed the panel. This has some more info.

AFAIK, it does phone home with a unique GUID, but only because they wanted to see which WT apps you're using. They make their money from commercially licensing the technologies out, so they want to see who's a student playing around with the SDK, and who's trying to make commercial games without paying them.

I stopped using it awhile ago..they indicated that they had no interest in getting it to work with other JVMs outside of MS(which pretty much locked it to IE), and were eventually going to switch to .NET. I talked to some of their guys a year ago..they seemed to be going strong, but I've no idea how they're making money these days.

...popup ads [...] seems penny-wise and pound-foolish, sacrificing long-term customer satisfaction [...] for a potential short-term boost in sales

Some pop businesses will buy a big load of product and act as "resellers". Once the product sold out, all the customers (pop viewers with spyware installed) saw the popup 100 times, any potential buyers where found. They start over with another product.

I know the spyware from Total Velocity does this (and a lot more).
The actual creator/distributor is "Santa Monica Networks" (smni.com).

They start by analyzing the most popular searches and web sites for the last few weeks or months, from the data accumulated through the spyware.

Then they find a related product, and make a "test run" of very few popups (~1000), not enough to create a wave of complaint. If sales are good they buy a big quantity for a good price. (Good is a 2% click on pops and 2% sale on clicks for clients recently searching or surfing for a similar product).

The Spyware, an autonomous EXE, opens a seperate IE process, so no embeded add-on pop-up blocker works!

Here is part of the term of use(from Kephyr spyware library) site:
"By using the Software, you may be exposed to contaminated files, computer viruses, eavesdropping, harassment, electronic trespassing, hacking and other harmful acts or consequences that might lead to unauthorized invasion of privacy, loss of data and other damages."

To add insult to injury, most of the soft. dev. done offshore in Estonia (www.smn.ee) and Lithuania (www.smn.lt), are involved (?) in several "network" and "network security" groups and consulting partnership (like at CISCO).

If you need to research them for your MBA or something, the business is:

Santa Monica Network Inc (SMNI.COM)
227 Broadway st. S.304
Santa Monica 90401

Lead Engineer:
Alex Karelin (original creator of the spyware)
alex@smni.com

Requested popup: a popup that is triggered by an OnClick or similar JS event, as opposed to popups that are triggered onUnload, OnLoad, OnHover and timed events triggered from those events. There used to be an excellent test for popup killers, but it appears down at the moment. This one isn't nearly as good, but it'll have to do I guess.