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End Run Around Pop-up Blockers
An anonymous reader writes "The pop-up arms race continues, cnet has this article on how advertisers are responding to pop-up blockers." Can't wait for a full page of javascripted user-initiated pop-ups.
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I have not had one popup since I fully switched to FireFox (around 6 months ago).
There is also a FireFox extension that blocks those annoying Flash popunder ads.
If the code is on the page, The Proxomitron can kill it. I haven't seen a pop-up that has been able to get past it yet, and even if one did, I could just make a new filter to kill all pop-ups of that sort.
It also blocks other ads, background midis, flash animations, and all sorts of other annoyances in addition to adding functionality to other sites if you're clever enough to write some nice regular expressions and HTML code.
Wonderful little program.
Yet another reason to abandon IE in favor of alternative browsers.
Firefox is better, of course, but then you have all of the Firefox spyware to deal with.
Click here to see some sneakier popup methods. Some even get around firefox popup blocking, although I'm certain that once they become popular, the army of mozilla hackers will find a way to block them.
... and add it to their hosts file pointing at 127.0.0.1 ...
I don't get this.
Why does everyone advocate pointing these to 127.0.0.1?
127.0.0.1 is your local machine. It's not some magic blackhole address. Using 127.0.0.1 really messes you up if you happen to be running a web server on your machine (doing web development, say). It's bad advice.
It's so much easier to point them to 0.0.0.0. That works just as well in the hosts file, and since it's an invalid IP address, attempting to open a socket returns immediately with failure. No need to bounce the requests off your local machine, and your web browser instantly blocks images, pages, etc. from those domains.
I develop a contextual/live feed advertising system (yes flame me if you wish) and we have one guy who attends IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) events here in the UK, so I get to hear about all the "latest and greatest" advertising formats.
/.ers don't have too much to worry about.
In response to the adblocking technology several new ad formats are being approved for general usage and they all suck.Basically the new ad formats are much much bigger than the current sizes. I can't remember what sizes they were but I was crying when I was told. (bad luck 800x600 users)
Other "great" news from the cutting edge of advertising is that more full movie streaming ads will become popular (obviously with advertisers not with users)
And worst of all what are currently blockable popup ads will be replaced with Flash overlays that fly around screen.
Apparently the IAB did an expensive study in the states into what normal users thought of all these new ad formats (pop-ups, pop-unders, flash overlays, dhtml etc,) And the result was that most users call all annoying ads "pop-ups" and they really hate them. Well duh, I'm not sure what the point of *that* study was for.
On the plus side I remember hearing that IAB guidlines will recommend all flash overlays have a close button.
So in general the whole state of affairs depresses me ALOT. I don't think the IAB/advertisers have even got Avalon on their radar yet, but I imagine Avalon ads will enable a whole new generation of annoying ads.
For normal users this will all suck, but most of the ads probably won't work on a standard debian install so
Some of my web applications use pop-ups (never for ads, though). Not a single one of them gets blocked by the Google toolbar pop-up blocker. Since some of those pop-ups are necessary for running the app, I was glad to discover this. But I've always wondered why that is.
Popups are irritating because they, well, pop up, when you least expect it, where you least expect it, and have to spend time and nerves closing it. But when you use tabbed browsing and set new windows to open up as new tabs, this problem is gone. It is when I use a browser without tabs for some time and notice those ugly popups that I think - why don't I ever notice any popups? And this is because when an ad appears in some tab, I just click where the X that closes the tab usually is and get it over with.
What I really want, however, is a "turn off flash" quick menu item, same for animated gifs
Get PithHelmet, a great little ad blocker for Safari. Supresses most Flash crap, and you can limit animated gifs to a single run. The web is a much calmer place with PithHelmet installed.
Food isn't the only product where lable and price are the only differences. I'm shure most slashdotters are aware how many tech items, such as cd-roms and dvd players are just rebadged.
I can also verify from personal experience that most charcoal is the same, when I briefly worked at factory packaging charcoal all we did was switch bags when we had enough of brand-x for that days order.
Most 'house' brands of anything are of course re-badged as well.
A clever tip I learned a while back about comsumer electronics. If it's got a fcc id number you can look it up on thier (fcc's) website to see who really makes it. They only isue one number per device no matter how many people change the plastic and re-sell it.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
The problem I've had with a few popup blockers is that they are not particularly intelligent. Some of them can't even tell the difference between a popup and when you create a new instance of your browser. Beating advertisers requires intelligent filtering at the HTTP stream level, and I've found that the Proxomitron is an excellent proxy that does this. Unfortunately, the writer burned out and it's no longer supported. As such, I've heard really good things about Provoxy, but I can't make a recommendation since I've never used it.
As far as Proxomitron goes, it makes my surfing much more pleasurable. Annoying Flash ads that pop up and make noise and block what you're reading? Gone. Pop-up mouse traps? I laugh in their face. Sidebar/banner ads? What are those? Sometimes, however, the Proxomitron DOES munge some sites due to its filtering, but all you have to do is double click its taskbar icon, punch the "Bypass" button, and reload your browser. A small price to pay compared to punching your monitor in because an ad just took over your browser.
For fighting spam, popups and malware in general, I find Cexx to be a good site. They have a decent list of anti spyware/adware apps, and lenghthy and informative analyses of the various spyware running around.
-R
For Mozilla Firefox, try PrefButtons;v /
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/cla
I'm surprised that they haven't figured this out.
This sig no verb.
Using /etc/hosts and the Adblock xpi within FireFox blocks everything I want. Even the IP addresses of all RIAA and MPAA domains ;-)
:-)
On Windows the hosts file is to be found in windows\system32\drivers\etc
The format of a hosts file looks like this
127.0.0.1 domainname
or
127.0.0.1 IP address
As 127.0.0.1 is localhost all requests to 'domainname' will be redirected to localhost. This works well on most operating systems.
A good example for a preconfigured hosts file can be found at http://remember.mine.nu
Don't forget to add the porn blocker hosts file which can be found within one of the listboxes on that site. My hosts file contains more than 88000 entries
As most trustworthy sites don't require Javascript and Java most users can deactivate it. Annoying Flash ads can be blocked with the Adblock XPI for Mozilla FireFox.
There's a way in Mozilla. "PrefBar". It also has a button that will kill any active flash running on the page. Plus, you can easily disable colors and images (also checkboxes) for easy printing.
and it allows me to use IE on those #$#!% sites that I need to vistit but require IE.
Unless using an IE-only 'feature' (like ActiveX) is a requirement for that site, change the user agent string in Mozilla and it should work (most of the times, at least). The user agent switching extension is handy for that ^_^
2. Global and Other Specialized Address Blocks
0.0.0.0/8 - Addresses in this block refer to source hosts on "this"
network. Address 0.0.0.0/32 may be used as a source address for this
host on this network; other addresses within 0.0.0.0/8 may be used to
refer to specified hosts on this network [RFC1700, page 4].
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3330.html
enjoy
Besides, a lot of floaters only work on IE. I'm mostly safe w/ Sarafi or Mozilla.
The really good floaters use DHTML and transparency to float above the page. IE doesn't handle DHTML too well. Mozilla DOES!
What is supposed to happen? I just see a page with blinking smilies. Mozilla Firefox 0.8 doesn't crash and doesn't open any new windows or tabs. I could just close the tab and was back at /.
Note the highlighted bit. 0.0.0.0/32 (the address we commonly call 0.0.0.0) can be used as a SOURCE address. That's quite different from being used as a DESTINATION address, which is what the entries in the hosts file will be used for in this case.
You need to look at RFC 1700 page 4, which the bit of RFC 3330 you quoted refers to:0.0.0.0 is specifically invalid as a destination address by RFC 1700.
That being said, Firefox and a good Adblock ruleset eliminates nearly 100% of these annoying things.
Adblock
Remember back in the old days, when people did HTML by hand? If you used a button or java, you always put a link in case the nav thingy failed, or if people were surfing with images off, since they had a brand new 14.4 modem (I did-a screaming replacement for my 9600).
Now I hear from people, mostly on dialup, (which is still very common), that this site or that site is so slow they never want to go there again. Maybe advertisers should know this, and stop trying to cram crap down peoples throat.
I hate flash, and refuse to use or support it. If I go to a site that has flash only and won't provide an alternate (I never enabled flash in Moz), then I just go away.
-cp-
Online gaming company to pan for gold
If you get rid of the spyware, and use Google Popup blocker or XP SP2, you don't have any problems.
In my experience, 99% of the popups comefrom spyware that is installed on the computer. If the software (spyware) is causing popups, google or any other blocker won't do jack.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
ESPN and CNN were both listed in the list of top pop-up/under ad users, and I visit both of those sites many times each day, and I never see a pop-up from either of them. In fact, I almost never see a pop-up ad from anyone... unless I disable my blockers.
I use two blockers, one by accident. I downloaded Google's toolbar because it helps me find anything anywhere on the net in about three seconds, rather than navigating to the Google home page in an additional two seconds. Time is money!
The other blocker I use is Ad-Watch, included with LavaSoft's Ad-Aware if you get the Plus or Premium version. Any pop-ups that the Google toolbar doesn't catch are caught by Ad-Watch, and I almost never see any at all. (The only time I do see them is when Ad-Watch is temporarily disabled or when I'm doing so much that my CPU can't keep up with me.)
This leaves one breed of ads that still annoy me, and I'm not talking about static banner ads, because tend to stay out of my way. I'm talking about the dynamic or floating banner ads, which are horrible because they cover up the content of the site I'm trying to view either for a few seconds or sometimes for an indefinite amount of time (until I find the tiny "close" button). I actually think some of these are blocked on occasion, but I know that they're what I see most these days (especially on ESPN and IGN), and I'd really like to see them go. So if anyone has any clue how to get rid of them, feel free to clue me in!