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Next-Gen Pop-up Ads
bje2 writes "CNet has a disconcerting story about a new generation of pop-up ads that use a "kick through" technique such that you don't even need to click on the pop-up ad anymore, you just need to mouse over it...wow, can they make our web surfing experience any worse?"
In many israelian sites, there are flash commercials that cover the contents, and are very hard to close.
You surf peacefully, and suddenly the screen is filled with lottery ad and the computer shouts " 50 millions!!! " at you.
There are other things, like a anti-virus ad that looks like the computer has been compromised, etc, which are just plain agressive.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Use Mozilla or Phoenix or Netscape 7.1 and turn them off. Probolem solved!
my hosts file is already several KB long. Another entry is added everytime an advertiser annoys me. Like Robofind. Soon to be Orbitz, I'm sure.
Yes, I use mozilla a lot, but I still need IE for some sites.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Go to espn to see this thing in action. I don't think this form of advertising is much worse than regular pop-ups, just slightly more annoying. I do wonder how advertising agencies will distinguish between eyeballs and click-throughs... since many people will click-through accidently on these things.
A favorite quote from the article: "There's an enormous segment of the population that are appreciating these ads". Eh, name one!
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Give this one a try.
simple javascript, surprised no one has thought of this before.
All the annoying flash and shockwave ads are gone as well. Bliss!
apt-get install adzapper
And then set your proxy. TaDa!
Phoenix has a pretty nice feature concerning this.
Whenever a window wants to pop up although you didn't click any link (so, most likely it was an ad), Phoenix will inform you that this has happened with a small exclamation mark in the left corner of the status bar.
Clicking on this exclamation mark will bring you to a window with more detailed information about the popup window, and the possibility to add this site to your list of sites that are allowed to open popups.
Sure, that goes with your warning that you might then also allow ad popups, while allowing the good, needed popups, but I think it does the job quite well. Had no problems with it.
Two Worlds - One Sun [Spirit]
Lock down your IE browser.h tm
Go into the security settings and disable almost everything in Internet Zone. Add your bank to Trusted Zone's Site List. Add Orbitz to your Restricted Zone Site's List and make sure that the Restricted Zone has everything turned off including the Java Custom Settings.
There are a number of Web sites that detail how to harden IE so it is Impervious to this sort of crap.
Here's one.
http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~ehowes/btw/ie/ie-opts.
Hmm... Moz can't just block these kind of ads or all those javascript menus and other leditimate onMouseOver scripts that's quite common might stop working.
Of course it can, in fact it even does so now:
Preferences> Advanced > Scripts & Plugins> Open unrequested windows.
I think it works by killing popups that are spawn by events like page loading and exiting, and allowing those that originate from user clicks. So it would work on these ads by dissallowing the evil popup in the first place.
Probably a good time to remind all the people forced to use Windows here of this little brilliant utility, which functions as a local proxy server and thus works with any browser, and can filter popups, the kind of mouseover events mentioned in this article, sounds, ads, everything. A must-have for Win32 people, in my opinion.
It is known that some spyware will install without the users permission by just surfing with IE. It is suspected that pages just accidently happen to use security holes in the browser or just low security settings, usually with ActiveX, to work around the problem of the browser asking the user about the install.
I can't find much on the topic, so take what I say with a grain on salt. However, I know people that actually have a clue (ie. they know IE is a flaming turd and not to trust anything it tries to install) complaining that a spyware somehow gets autoinstalled on their windows boxes by just web surfing.
Gator itself does autoinstall on computers that have their IE security settings set too low and is documented on the web as doing so.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
I went to epsn.com - another "search engine" owned by domain squatters. They call themselves "megago" this time.
However, it dropped down a Mozilla warning field!! Your only options are "Cancel" or "OK." Obviously, "OK" is the default, so if you hit return, off you go to some other website. Now that is a bunch of crap.grr..
Screenshot here
Lately, I've purposely been visiting lots of sites that send me SPAM, pop-up ads, and other annoyances. Usually, these sites want information from you and have a form to fill out. Simply fill out the form with junk data and submit it a couple times. If the company wasted some of your time, you are entitled to waste some of their time (not to mention diskpace).
Some sites might have a threatening message that says, "We have your IP and we'll contact you if you mess with us." If that's the case, simply connect through a free proxy server.
I recommend everyone try this. You'll feel better afterwards.
I use the internet for information: how-to's, pictures, articles, file downloads, etc. ALL javascript, activex, etc. is disabled on my machine. Why? Because no matter what I'm looking for on the internet, if it is on a page with that crap on it, I can ALWAYS find it somewhere else that doesn't use it. I have NOT gotten one popup ad in two years, and, while it may take me just a bit longer to find a driver, picture, etc. I have NEVER had problems finding the content somewhere else. (No, I don't bank online, or belong to any 'exclusive' passworded sites.) I have clicked a few banner ads, as they link to something of interest to me, but there is NO reason for "content" providers to use anything but HTML. The internet was/should be about free exchange of information, NOT about exclusivity. If you want that, use mozilla's source (or something else) and write an exclusive app for connections.
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
(ok, ok, I've been playing with PHP lately ;)
Maybe it's under my threshold or something, but if you haven't installed Privoxy as a local proxy yet, you're n-v-t-s nuts..
Works great in Linux, and OS X from personal experience, and it's supported on just about anything.. Though I have a bug with Mac IE on OSX and Privoxy, which doesn't really bug me (Chimera works perfectly)..
Privoxy works under nixes and win32. It allows on-the-fly rewriting of web pages to eliminate all the nasties. It's fast (a few tough sell converts were amazed ... it is instantaneous).
... yet not missing any of that junk!
Plus, you can configure it easily via its web interface. I have it set to allow some friendly but fragile sites, and replace the checkerboard blocked ad images with a transparent one (ads just magically disappear!).
Used in conjuction with Mozilla (cookie manager, allow images from site only) and the web becomes useful again.
Last time I checked the privoxy stats, I was blocking 17% of all requests