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New Online Ad Technology To Bypass Popup Blockers
RetroGeek writes "Falk eSolutions AG is claiming it can detect and defeat pop-up and pop-under ad blockers. The best quote is that when they detect an ad blocker they will 'replace a pop-up or pop-under ad with what are called "floating" ads, or ads that appear as transparent images over Web-site content.' As far as I am concerned they can place as many transparent images as they want. He probably meant translucent. It should be easy to defeat the detection, after all visit a web site, the pop-up blocker detects a Javascript command, then doesn't run it. Replace this with: the pop-up blocker detects the Javascript command, runs it, then places the result into a bit-bucket. Any Mozilla devs here?" WebGangsta adds "While this may ignite another round of online advertising purchasing, this news doesn't affect anybody who uses a customized HOSTS file to stop the majority of ads from appearing anyway."
I have an easy way to defeat their technology.
Every time I see a pop-up that defeats my pop-up blocking, first I'll for damned sure never buy that product. In addition, I will never go to the hosting website again. And I'll make damned sure they know why.
There is no topic on the internet that can be served by only one site.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
The next wave will be full fledged interrupt ads on most major sites. Already a couple high-profile companies are using them and more are sure to follow.
Advertising is and will kill the Internet. Out of the ashes will be born something new and better.
I just wish they'd hurry up and get done fucking everyone in the ass so we can start over fresh.
Fresh as a summers day.
I wonder if I can copyright my peaceful desktop, then use the DMCA to sue these clowns for circumventing my copyright protection.
Would be nice though wouldn't it?
superman runs linux
http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/
Here's an example of this style of anti-popup-blocker advertisement. This site, which is very useful by the way, will not "work" if javascript is not enable or ads are not shown.
I haven't tested this in other browsers, but this system is pretty neat (awful?)... it changes itself so its hard to detect the functions and block them.
Sue them under the DMCA claiming that they are bypassing a security feature that you installed to block ads?
I've seen this already. Sliding windows across the text, with a "close" button that's the only thing I will ever click. When will these advertising bozos figure out that if I'm going to all that trouble to block their ads, then I'm not in their target market anyway?
Even the spammers are smart enough to figure that one out. I've received about a spam a month since I changed my domain registration email address from "domains@" to "domspam@". Before I changed over, I was receiving one or two dozen a day, even though most bounced when the account's purposely low quota filled up.
I guess popup blockers have become too easy to use. Now that my mother-in-law, queen of "click anything", can install it, the spamvertizers have to find another way to infiltrate her system.
I'm looking forward to a future release of Opera with "pop-in blocking" built in.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
If you encounter one of these ads, send feedback to the people who run the site. Play dumb and pretend your web browser choked on them. Say that you tried to look at their site, but this huge ad appeared covering the text and you couldn't read anything or make the ad go away, and tell them that you gave up and left and won't be coming back in future if they can't make their web site work.
unfortunately, people apparently are buying stuff from spam, so it stands to reason people actually do buy stuff off pop ups/pop unders. so yes, they do think it's gonna increase their sales.
however, using this targets precisely the wrong segment of online users: the people who know enough to block them in the first place. anybody wanna give odds on how long before some overzealous kid DDOSes their site?
ed
I got a huge surprise the other day. I always browse with mozilla, and the only anti-ad extension I installed was Flash click-to-play. There are a couple of sites taht I've been frequently lately, and they had no ads or anything. So, I thought they were good netizens and even donated to one of them.
Then I was stuck in a lab with IE only. I went to these sites, and they had popups and those transparent ads that place themselves over the page. It was crazy how much advertising there was. I wish that I could take my money back.
Mozilla so far gets rid of 99% of these annoying ads without causing a problem. But the advertisers are bound to catch on soon. I can only hope that mozilla stays in the lead.
Of course you could do the less rich, IE only (what isn't?) Notepad Pop-Up
To all who visit the dilbert website regularly, has anyone seen that floating ad that blocks the last panel of the strip? I have seen it about 5 times and I read the site daily. I use NS7.2 and have not seen a popup ad anywhere since I started using it. I assume this ad is some sort of CSS. This type of advertising is not pop up, but it is certainly annoying. What's to stop other websites from doing something similar? It might require more than pasting some banner code in your page, but still...
blocking ads by domains through Hosts file is the dumbest thing one can do, especially when you're on Windows. It's a resource hog and doesn't accomplish half of what can be done with Privoxy or Proxomitron.
Don't touch the Hosts file.
Actually a lot of spammers are middlemen, they make money wether a product sells or not, they work as advertisers and get paid by the people selling the product. What they rely on is the percecption that "spam works", so people will hire them to do spam campaigns.
Spammers make profits without making a sale
That explains it. The spams I've been getting lately are less and less legible. They can't possibly think they are doing marketing anymore. As far as I'm concerned, it's no better than harassment or vandalism.
A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
Rather than messing with hosts, use a custom style sheet. I know Safari on OS X supports this. I'm guess most modern browsers do as well (maybe not MSIE).
Here's mine.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
I wonder when one of the pop-up blocker companies are going to start filing suit under the DMCA for circumvention of their blocker. It would be nice to see a REAL use of the DMCA for once instead of a big business scare tactic.
they're actually exit popups that are launched by that blank popup, so if you close that one before you close the main window they don't launch
mozilla won't let you open windows off screen so you can't hide that one like you can in IE
...oh well, our "target market" are IE users anyways ;)
Once upon a time, I was stuck on a plane ride from Georgia, I think. Atlanta. Anywho, I sat next to this marketing guy for a good three hours, and in between the mindnumbing explanation how our seat cushions would double as a floatie in the event of a water crash^Wlanding and our arrival over stinky Boston Harbor, he made the insightful comment that if an ad is bad enough that you remember it, then the ad has paid itself off, because mindshare, good or bad, is good. At least now, the product is known to you, whereas before, it might not have been.
Ergo, the 7up commercials.
if you block their pop-up ads, their spyware/adware will surely get you later. No need to install their malware, it gets installed automatically.
JS IRNOR.M anyone? Really nasty malware I found on my system that NAV and others could not detect. It uses HTML and Javascript to install itself from a web page. Lookt2me was another one, the latest version could not be removed, it did pop-ups and destroyed my TCP/IP stack after I removed it. Forcing a reinstall of the OS.
You really want to get rid of pop-ups forever? Reformat the hard drive, install Linux and Mozilla/Firefox and avoid sites that require IE or Windows in order to work.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I agree with you, but there is a difference between the ads that are out there. I use the AdBlock extension with FireFox. It works great, and I have completely forgotten about ads on the internet. I can still perform fast Google searches and I have no interest in blocking their ads. Why? Because all of the ads that I have blocked are images; colourful, moving, flashy images. I have no problem with simple soft-colour text ads, a la Google, but I hate ads that are like the X11 camera ads.
When Advertisments start to deter a user from surfing the web, you know it's gone too far. yes, sometimes the ads are nice and you're actually looking for them, but generally, they're obnoxiours and rude. Salon, I think, has a good idea on how to handle things. I don't have time to really read much news online, so I don't subscrube to them. I do however go through their 1-ad view for a free-day-pass when there is 1 article that someone has sent me.
I will bitch and bitch and then bitch some more when I am bombarded with ads. I hate them when I pay 11$ to see a movie and I'm forced to see commercials, and I hate them when I pay money to go to a website (hey, access to the internet does cost money and image ads are a b/w hog).
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
Your logic is bullsh%t. (you can pretend it's 'sophistry' if the word offends you). Commercials on tv and spam on the 'net are two entirely different things.
Commercials on TV produce revenue as an offset for us to see shows essentially for free.
Spammers are NOT providing ANY any services to us in return for their spam. If we were receiving free connections or the cost of providing you with the cost of upgrading your connection to broadband over dialup, that would be different - and there are other types of services which put ads around your screen while you are connected. That's the choice of the person connecting. So those of us who have been on for ten, fifteen, twenty years are suddenly gaing what for this garbage? Nothing. Until they provide some type of service (e.g., tv shows) there can be no comparisons of tv ads and spam.
The parent claiming otherwise should be required to pay (ala FearFactor) for all of one Slashdot-day (all material in all forums) to be printed out hardcopy, shredded, and forced to be eaten with sour milk for breakfast - until it's gone. And anythings which comes up will still need to be reconsumed.
This type of confusion is exactly the type of garbage spammers and related bodies (e.g., DMA - Direct Marketing Association) want to instill so the issue of penalties appears to be harsh because they'll police themselves.
"Banner Blocking Detected You have been brought to this page because it was detected that your web browser, software on your computer or some other event is preventing some or all of our banner ads from being displayed on our pages correctly. If you are not using a utility to block banners, you may have been inadvertently brought here because a banner image did not load correctly. Please make sure you have enabled images and disable any ad blocking software then try again.
If you sincerely want a banner free experience on our site and are willing to help support our efforts directly, we do offer a paid subscription option. This option is especially useful for educators who would like to use our site in their classroom without the distractions banner ads create.
Banner Blocking Manifesto
We understand that you may find banner advertising annoying. This website, however, is not sponsored or produced by some faceless rich corporation or public entity. This site is the product of the hard labor of one individual and his family. Producing and delivering the content on this site is expensive. If we are to continue to make the resources on this website available to individuals like yourself free of charge, we must be allowed to use banner advertising as a means of paying the costs of maintaining this website.
The relationship between the web content provider (in this case us) and the content consumer (you) must be a symbiotic relationship. If small web publishers like us are to continue to be able to provide access to useful information free of charge, we must get something in return. In this case it is the ability to display and earn revenue off of banner advertising.
Kenneth Barbalace
Creator of EnvironmentalChemistry.com
How to Disable Ad Blocking Software
There are scores programs and services on the market that offer banner ad blocking abilities. As such we will only focus on a few of the most common programs.
Symantec Norton Internet Security: If you are using Symantec's "Norton Internet Security" software, banner blocking may have been turned on without your knowledge. You can turn off ad blocking in Symantec NIS by opening Norton Internet Security. In the main window, double-click Ad Blocking and then uncheck "Ad Blocking".
ZoneAlarm Pro firewall: If you are using the firewall ZoneAlarm pro, you can turn off ad blocking under the tab "Privacy" and then slide the "Ad Blocking" control to the off position.
AdSubtract: If you ar using AdSubtract, right mouse click on the AdSubtract icon in your task tray (looks like an orange circle with a plus and minus sign) and select "Disable AdSubtract".
WebWasher: If you are using WebWasher, right mouse click on the WebWasher icon in your task tray (looks like a blue circle with a white "W" and then select "Deactivate standard filter".
Related Resources TechTV - Rage Against the Ad-Blocking Machines
"Ask SlashDot" article
Steal this Site"
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Here's another great but little known technique: the PAC file ad-blocker. Cross-browser, easy to install, and much more lightweight than a HOSTS file, plus it can match paths on servers like "/ads*/" rather than just server domains themselves.
:).
Enjoy
<!-- DHTML / JavaScript menu, popup tooltip, Ajax scripts -->
I wish there was something similiar in Firefox! My employeer's virus scanner (McAfee) can restrict sites by IP address or URL.
A problem is that these days, some web sites (SlickDeals.net) are doing some things that causes valid pages to fail to load because of my "blocked sites". I usually get a "Cannot find server or DNS Error" because I've blocked various ad sites.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
People (sellers) have gone on record as saying they never saw any business because of these methods, yet when they employed Googles addwords the could register a big change almost at once. Because Googles adds are mostly relevant and never annoying.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The big problem with this war is that there is so much collateral damage.
With each measure people take to block the popups and other types of advertisement, they also end up blocking content and applications that they need.
Once, people thought the browser will become the "application environment". The latest W3C inventions makes that more viable every day. But, now look what we've _removed_ from the environment:
1) Dialog Boxes: Gone. You can usually still use a javascript alert, but you can't prompt the user with a dialog box anymore, a primitive UI component.
2) Random things broken: "Adblock" css and stuff like that, which blocks images and iframes when the relative path to those things starts with "ad"? So, if slashdot's preferences were called "adjustments", that would get killed.
Sure, people can sometimes turn these things off, but more and more often, people are having these things installed without even knowing they're there (like millions will when XP SP 2 comes out).
This whole situation is rapidly making the web a much less hospitable environment for applications.
Are you influenced by commercials on the TV? Of course you are.
Of course i am - i make sure never to buy anything for which i can remember a commercial.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I pay for my Internet connection. It's not free. The idea of paying for a service is not a problem here. And the "free" in "free software" refers to various freedoms, not the price. I've paid several $1000s over the years for "free" software.
But the popup advertising model is based on a "here, the content is free, now how do I make money?" mentality. It's stupid because they're starting on the backfoot. I've already got the content. They're crossing their fingers that I also click on the ad and generate some revenue. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
There are plenty of other solutions. Sites could work out a partnership with ISPs; if you provide content, you get paid by the ISP, funded by content "consumers" like myself. Or you could go like Salon; subscription model, or watch an ad in advance. I don't find either of Salon's solutions offensive (strangely enough).
You believe that the reason we're able to do things like "read news for free online" is because of advertising, and if we block all the advertising then the news goes away. Fine. I don't care. The web was much better back when it wasn't infested with spam, porn ads, and popup crap. I personally believe that companies will find other revenue, most likely pay-for-view or subscription models, and the content will not go away. But hey, we'll never know until we block all the ads and effect a change.
You don't know which sites have popups until you visit them. So it is false to say that you are free to avoid any site that uses them (unless you meant avoiding all web sites altogether).
I'm a fan of directed advertising. I don't mind sites knowing my purchasing tastes if that means I don't get ads for pointless stuff I'd never buy. Ads for things I actually might like are much less annoying than wasting my time with ads that flood the market looking for those few people here and there that might be interested, of which I'm not one of them.
I think directed advertising would make consumers less annoyed (assuming it's based on accurate information and assuming you have the ability to ban categories you are not interested in), and make advertisers happier too because they know people might actually LOOK at their ad instead of immedieatly going, "oh, and ad - i'll click the 'X' button in the corner before I even look at it.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
To be fair (and this is the definition of devil's advocacy) not all marketing is intrusive. The posters you see when you walk into a movie theater are marketing devices placed there by the marketing departments of the relevant studios, and (MPAA gripes aside) I can't imagine a moral objection to that type of marketing. Again, I think intrusive vs. non-intrusive is the key.
Battling Beasts
I have to disagree about it being the dumbest thing I can do. I've got a 4,000-line hosts file on all my OS X Macs and I never noticed the slightest blip in CPU usage or slowness in my browsing. And, my custom "Another blocked ad!" 404 page brings a smile to my face every time I see it in a page that uses inline frames to store ads.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Ah the dot com boom days. Seems like every business plan involved giving stuff away. In 1999 my wife visited a web site that was giving away address labels in the hopes that people would like them enough to buy more in the future. She filled out the online form, and in a few days a shiny new roll of address labels appeared in the mail box exactly as promised.
And fine address labels they are. Their mistake was sending such a large roll. It's now 2004 and we're still using those same labels.
It owns. It's a powerful proxy filter that can let you view webpages exactly how you want to. It's better than a prepackaged block all because you get to control exactly what it filters by writing the filters yourself. It's not limited to ads; there are filters to enhance browsing and others. Of course it isn't as easy to use as something like google toolbar.
i went there and found a javascript that launched a flash ad that would not go away. So if i uninstalled flash would it not be there? Maybe I will just not go to those sites that use this crap. Fuggem.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
This is very true. I once went to a "job offer presentation" that proved to be a telemarketer. And I happened to sit where I could see the head honcho's desk, which happened to have the previous week's phone-monkey pay records lying open ... and I read quite well upsidedown, thank you..
ONE person made the promised "$700 a week".
ONE person made about $100 for the week.
All the rest (about 30) made $40 for the week.
Mind you, that was a 40 hour week.
I vaguely recall that some states require that commission work also pay a certain minimum hourly wage (at least until your commission hits a certain point), but it may not apply to telemarketing. Anyone know?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Ah, but see, you "know" about the X-10 Cams. The more annoying the ad the better it is for the person selling the advertised goods. X-10 did a hell of a job getting their name out. Bad publicity is still publicity, and for small outfits selling on the net, vendors would pay a primium to get that kind of brand recognition.
/.'s. All the tools that are available to remove ads and popups *IS* a good thing. There's way too much "noise" on the net as it is. There are a lot of advertisers who are abusing the medium to the point where getting online means gawking at irrelevant ads instead of actually doing something useful.
if 1,000 people didn't know about your company and the product your selling, then those 1000 people WILL NOT EVER buy anything from you. Now if 1000 people see your annoying ads, you got 1000 people who know who you are and what you're selling. The chances of getting a sales boost vastly increases once people know that you exist and have something to offer.
Not everyone is as loathing of advertisements. They CAN be a good thing when done right. If we didn't have advertisements how would we hear about new products coming out? How would we know if a product existed if there was no press releases (a form of advertising) or TV/radio/net commercials?
Now don't get me wrong, I hate ads just as badly as most
Right now advertisers have a hell of a stronghold on bogging people's systems down with spyware and ads. However, people *are* getting wise to this and are taking measures to keep things down to a dull roar. Once one side has the power, the other side steals it back for a while...human nature i guess.
It's all about balance. I know it's there, I see it when i swing past.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
not the original poster but i did this once. I was paid pretty well for a college job. i think it was around 10 bux an hour. I don't recall any success minumums but we had to basically stay on teh phone all day.
On a side note, that is the only job i have ever left hanging. One saturday I woke up and realized I just couldn't be that guy any longer. So I just turned over and went to sleep. They treated us like children so I had no feeling of responisiblity to them as I did to other jobs i have had.
we were calling for donations to a hospital. our script had us start out asking for 2 grand and work our way down. my two favorite calls:
1. one lady told me that if I paid for her divorce, she would donate the 2k
2. One guy said he wasn't interested. I asked why? Poor service (this was a hospital remember). Not for him but for his wife. Oh really, I say, what happened? Well, she died. I could understand him not really being interested in giving the hospital that killed his wife a donation so I quickly got off the phone. Apparently the bosses were listening in on that one and told me not to let them off so easily but to continue to press harder. In fact, I think that was the last shift I completed.