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The Return Of The Pop-Up Ad
SYFer writes "Shortly after upgrading my Macs to OS X 10.3.8, I noticed that I was getting pop-up ads on Safari. It had been so long since I'd seen a pop-up, I completely forgotten how annoying they can be. I went over to Apple's Support site to see if there was a relationship, but learned that the timing is just a coincidence (even though there's a lot of the usual FUD and flailing of arms in the discussion forums). In fact, it turns out that the pop-up advertisers (what's the proper denigrating term here?) have finally defeated the pop-up blocking functionality found in many browsers. MacFixIt is running a front page article on the topic and says 'Contrary to initial reports, this problem isn't limited to Safari; subsequent reports have noted pop-under ads victimizing a number of browsers that provide pop-up-blocking features, including the latest versions of Safari, FireFox, Mozilla, OmniWeb, and Camino.'"
...it's time for the return of my shotgun to active duty.
I tolerate text ads because something has to pay for the web, but popups and other abusive ads (like the huge flash ads in the slashdot TEXT ONLY service) just get blocked. The fuckwits deserve not to get any ad revenue for pulling stupid tricks like that.
Beep beep.
it turns out that the pop-up advertisers (what's the proper denigrating term here?)
Poppers? Plippers? Flippers? Flappers? Wippers? Snappers?
Sorry, kinda high on Red Bull right now.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
...am I lucky.
Lynx is, and continues to be, the ultimate browser for ad-less internet browsing.
Take that, 21st century!
In any event, it's going to be something of an arms race between advertisers and pop-up blockers. Ideally, these jerkwad marketers should realize that people using pop-up blockers do not want to see their ads and display them to someone else who does want to see them. If they can find anyone like that.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
-- Note: These Comments are Generated by ME! Not You! ME!
It's sorta like this:
"SCREW YOU, POPUP-BLOCKING BASTARD!! Now buy our cheap cameras.
Hmm...
So....how long before firefox develops a popup blocker blocker blocker?
I think I just confused myself. Yikes.
Lately I've been hearing complaints by people using Firefox of some sites having pop-ups come up again. The biggest complaint coming from people that visit The Drudge Report. I too have seen them.
However, ever since I started using the Adblock extension, as well as keeping an updated list of definitons, I haven't had these problems lately.
How does defeating a measure designed to block your ads make good business sense? Does forcing your ads upon someone known to hate your approach produce good results? Does irritation equal a higher rate of return because people who hate your ads see them and have a change of heart? Do they say, "Hey, I had no idea those hateful ads were so interesting and useful to me. I think I'll buy their product."
Cuz my instinct is that when a person takes active efforts to banish you from their lives, forcing your way into their living rooms isn't a cost-effective approach. But hey, I don't work in advertising, as anyone who reads my About page on the headlines site knows. I like advertising in its place, but c'mon, if I kick you out of my house, stay there, please.
The Internet ad industry is causing an arms-race they won't be able to win. If the increasingly popular pop-up (or pop-under really in this case) blockers start getting defeated, that is just going to force the average browser user to start using a custom Hosts file of some kind to block nearly all ads. There isn't too much the ad industry can do about that, IMO, with the possible exception of making the ads come from the same server as the content. This will be okay for some sites, but I can't imagine too many people will want to give up that much control over their sites.
(But maybe that control is the ultimate plan of the ad industry - it would really make things easier on them...)
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
So....how long before firefox develops a popup blocker blocker blocker?
Blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, pop-up, pop-up
Blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, blocker, ARGH! Spam! A spam!
(apologies to weebl)
Pop-up free for me, but adblock did block two javascript items which is probably why. With a combination of adblock and userContent.css in firefox I'm still pop-up ad free.
You might want to try something similar. If things get really desparate, using an blocking HOSTS file can help as well.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
It's my understanding that Mozilla was designed with 20/20 hindsight, and got rid of all the ways that websites annoyed users through IE. It's just that the advertisers were a bit more resourceful than I would have thought, and managed to pull a new rabit out of their hat just for non-IE users. I've been seeing popups with Firefox for a couple months on certain sites, and now on a few others as well. Interestingly, if I use IE for those same sites, I get a other popups, but I don't get the ones that I was getting under Firefox.
Anyway, I'm not too concerned. I don't doubt that an update or plugin will be made soon to stop even these, if one's not already out and I just haven't noticed.
In the arms race between pop ups and browser, I'll put my money on the Firefox team. There's no way to win the pop up battle against open source. Against MSFT, certainly. They develop at the speed of glacier.
I'm guessing the first couple pop ups the Firefox developers see they'll be writing a fix.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I sent them a brief email: I received an email from them soon after that they had sent to their advertising partner, TribalFusion:
Needless to say, I was very impressed, am browsing Macslash again, and have yet to see any more of these pop-ups.
-Paul
A not-terribly-computer-savvy friend of mine is having problems with his AOL email.
So I suggested he sign up for Yahoo mail, because all the people I know who use it find it perfectly satisfactory.
He can't get signed up for Yahoo mail. I tried coaching him step by step over the phone. I can't be 100% certain of what's happening, but as I followed through the same steps on my own browser, he ran into troubles at exactly the point when Yahoo popped up a confirmation screen on my browser.
I'm about 95% sure he has popup blocking enabled and that's what's preventing him from signing up with Yahoo.
Of course, he doesn't know what a popup blocker is, or how to control it.
So, these days there are probably users who are suffering both from the new popups and from incompatibilities caused by the use of popup blockers.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
http://z1.adserver.com/w/cp.x;rid=52;tid=4;ev=1;d
That javascript changes each time you load it (I think there are only a handful and the server picks one pseudorandomly). This means that sometimes it will hit you with popups, and sometimes it won't.
The code is obfuscated and I haven't sorted through it. The easy way to block it is to redirect z1.adserver.com in you /etc/hosts or block it at your firewall.
You may need to click on a link in order to experience the popup, though the links themselves are legitemate http hrefs.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Just turn off javascript in the browser you use. If a site requires javascript then don't go there.
That is not a viable option. 95% of the sites I (and almost every other web user) visit use javascript in some way, shape, or form. I don't want to take the mindset of "Flash is evil, images are a waste of bandwidth, java is pathetic (even though it is, but that's beside the point). The Internet is full of crap so I should just use Lynx." I like to see things other than plain text and images. I can deal with a couple of pop-up ads here and there until the next version of Firefox comes out.
--guru
A solution to this is to install the AdBlock extension for Mozilla/Firefox. Once you've done this, grab this list of search strings. Once you've done this, import the text file and you should be home free. Try to keep that file updated as it should be a good starting-off point, but will become outdated as time goes by.
Well, here is what I do in Firefox. I haven't received any pop-ups (yet). In the options dialog, under "Web Features" you'll find that on the far right across from the "Enable Javascript" checkbox is a button that says, "Advanced."
"Allow scripts to: " (remove check marks next to the following)
- "Move or resize existing windows"
- "Raise or lower windows"
- "Disable or replace context menus"
I also uncheck "Hide the status bar" but that's a personal preference.After unchecking those along with having the pop-up blocker enabled I no longer get any pop-ups. And I really don't see unchecking those having any profound viewability problems on the web. If a site needs to resize your window, it's usually because they want to open a pop-up along side it. :P Same goes for raising/lowering too.
Even better, try flashblock. It's an extension for firefox that will block flash files from being loaded until you click on them, get it at flashblock.mozdev.org
Out of Cheese Error:
Please reboot universe
I don't doubt that an update or plugin will be made soon to stop even these, if one's not already out and I just haven't noticed.
Setting 'browser.block.target_new_window' to true in about:config seems to work, I haven't noticed any.
The 'popup' at the Hidustan Times link does not create a new browser window. The popup content is displayed on top of the html content using a CSS layer. --Bruce
HaHa: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
What gets me is that advertisers must realize how incredibly irritating popups are, and how much people hate them, yet they continue to use them to advertise. Won't this build ill-will against the product/company being advertised?
If folks go through so much trouble to block the darn things, advertisers should realize that it's not a good way to advertise, and switch to a less annoying method.
Same idea applies with spammers and spam filters. Why do spammers try so hard to get through to people who hate spam enough to block it? They're definitely not going to be customers!
-Z
Wow. Kind of weird. Firefox says the add was blocked. After a little while though, it pops under. I've never seen this before, so I decided to investigate. Seems it pulls some javascript file from some other domain. Fastclick.net in this case. Is there a tool that blocks the site from bringing scripts in from other domains? Like blocking images from other domains? This would probably stop a lot of the problems.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It wouldn't surprise me if the advertisers aren't trying to do more than just find ways to get the pop-ups to show. Depending on what products they are trying to sell, I'd think they'd try to circumvent a certain browsers blocker.
If you know that your demographic is more likely to use Firefox or a Mac, why waste time getting around IE's defenses?
What does this button do...
Not to reply to myself, but, after further investigation, I have some more info. The script that it links to has a function called ffPop, which probably stands for firefox popup. This function does a document.write of an embed tag pointing to a swf file. http://cdn.fastclick.net/fastclick.net/ffp.swf That file, when loaded, will make firefox have a popup window. Maybe this will lead to having these popups blocked in future versions of firefox
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Of course advertisers know this annoys most people. However, the situation is the same as spam -- someone is clicking on those ads and buying the products. The number of people doing this is enough to make it worthwhile for them to continue doing this.
oh, one more thing. Fill in a url querystring parameter to that url, and you get a popup with that address. For example: http://cdn.fastclick.net/fastclick.net/ffp.swf?url =http://www.google.ca
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Well, considering how long it's been going on, despite how god damn annoying it is, it must be making them money - otherwise, they would stop, correct?
Site with popups
Note that it doesn't always pop-up.
Le français vous intéresse?
Haven't you heard of gmail?
Are you really going to complain loudly to the webmaster of every little javascript-based site you want to use and wait for them to redo the site?
Do you realize that many sites are actually faster with javascript on, because there is a non-trivial application running on the client site, and it needs to download no (or very little) data for many of the requests, as opposed to loading the whole damn page every time you want to change the width of a column in a table?
Wouldn't that also block user-initiated javascript popups? Many sites use these legitamately (though they are annoying).
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Popups killed Yahoo, at least for me. Before I got reliable popup-blocking from Mozilla, Yahoo slammed me with popups every time I visited. So I quit visiting. Even when I got good popup blocking, I'd found other services to fill those needs, and Yahoo isn't, nor will it ever again be, my default "portal" for everything. I hope what they made with those popups was worth the ill will from me and (I'm certain) others like me who just quit visiting.
... a jerk ... when it comes to stuff like that. If a salesman is being pushy or otherwise "slick" I'll say so and walk out of a store, no matter how good the deal might have been. If a supermarket has long lines, I'll drop my stuff and leave. And if a website wants to make money by obtrusive advertising, I'll find another website that doesn't.
.... people?
You know those cool X10 video cameras? I'm sure you saw the popups for those too. I might have gotten one if they weren't frickin' synonymous in my mind with popup advertisers. (Just like I'm never going to refinance my mortgage with a spammer, no matter how good a deal I'm going to get.) They look like a neat little geek toy, but I'm going to have to wait for another company to make them before I'll get one.
I guess I'm a little bit of
I know there are trade-offs and deals must be made in order to have low prices or provide good content for free. But there is a point at which I really feel like a place sucks, and at that point, I am willing to go through the inconvenince of finding someone else to deal with, rather than give money to those who would abuse me. It may work for other people, but if you don't serve me well, you don't make money from me.
It's not like there aren't other businesses who will take my money (or in the case of websites, my eyeballs) and give me what I want.
I wish more people did this, then maybe megacorps would treat people like
The requested URL
Setting 'browser.block.target_new_window' to true in about:config seems to work, I haven't noticed any.
That isn't the only way advertisers are getting around popup blockers. This only applies to FireFox, as it's all I use:
There's an element called dom.popup_allowed_events in about:config, which has stuff like 'submit click dblclick' etc.
One website that's nefarious for insufferable ads (zophar.net) recently added code to make clicking legitimate links trigger popup ads. My solution was to remove all allowed popup events by making dom.popup_allowed_events = ""
Yeah, it'll probably break a few poorly written image galleries; but if everyone starts doing this, maybe people will stop thinking its OK to pop open new windows to show images.
This method should still allow target="_blank" tags to work in hyperlinks, but has its own problems as well. For what it's worth, I also have not seen any popup ads since doing this.
This is very useful. It's worth noting, also, that removing all "allowed" popup events doesn't completely kill your ability to use sites that need popups...it just causes Firefox to warn you that it has blocked something, allowing you to adjust settings for that site.
Seems to have fixed all those new popups for me.
I am right there with you. I'm sorry, but there just aren't any websites that are so important to me that I feel the need to beg for bullshit by turning on a bunch of pointless features.
The very concept of a pop-up blocker is stunning to anybody who has been using the web since before Javascript became common. (To say nothing of the folks who have been using the Internet since before it had websites on it!) I can think of very few features that were so bad that users begged for ways to prevent the feature from being used... And said feature wasn't removed from the product!
Can you imagine if car makers started including bombs in all their cars, and you had to get or make a special explosion-blocker? You'd think that it would occur to the manufacturer to just not install the bomb, rather than working on the ultimate explosion blocker!
I'm using more exclamations points than is my habit, but only because I find the situation so excrutiatingly baffling. If, in IE6, MS had simply not bothered to include the code to open new windows automatically, the world would be a better place, and few people would have felt the need to switch to better browsers. Any sane web designer has come to realise that their user's hate popups. Further, any sane web designer has to deal with the fact that their 'legitimate' popups are likely to be blocked. Thus, any sane web developer should just stop using popups as part of the actual site, so all popups can be assumed ads, and we can just abandon the feature entirely.
To quote Mr. Jeff Foxworthy's guide to UI design... When you have features that make front page news when they get used, because your users hate those features so vehemently, you might be a bloat-peddler.
Why do we want to surrender functionality? Don't give up the web to those that abuse it. Kick them off it by boycotting. Google has almost singlehandedly re-launched the dotcom boom by getting the eyeballs of people who choose to reward good sites and ignore bad tactics such as pop-ups, excessive banners, animations, and blurring between content and advertizement. You have the power to determine content. Don't bow out by surrending both the content and the functionality.
I was thinking this myself, but I realise that now with browser integration of popup blockers (even in IE), people aren't necessarily explicitly choosing to block popups anymore. I assume the advertisers figure that some of the people blocking popups are only doing so because it was on by default in their browser, and if they can get around that, they can sell to these people.
The corollary would be that if specific popup blocker applications that need to be actually installed by the user used different methods to block popups, the advertisers would theoretically not try to stop these. I'm wondering if these popups will still get around Pop-Up Stopper, actually - it uses a much more no-nonsense strategy for stopping popups (ie, you cannot open any browser windows at all beyond the first one unless you're holding Ctrl or Shift - I've simply gotten used to that instead)
Zophar and other sites that pop in Firefox seem to be using javascript that traps the click and mouseup methods on all links. If they don't get you when you click, they get you when you let up on the button. Technically, these are user-initiated pops, so FF doesn't block them.
You don't have to kill all allowed events, just hash out click and mouseup.
dom.popup_allowed_events = "change #click dblclick #mouseup reset submit" works well and still alows legitmate popups when you click form buttons and other user-requested behavior.
As always, you can always allow a site you need popups on.
It's worth noting, though, that target="_blank" is deprecated in XHTML strict. If you're trying to write strictly compliant web pages (that is, XHTML 1.0 Strict/1.1), there's no answer except javascript for firing off a new window.
That said, I like the idea of NO popups of ANY sort without authorization. As long as Firefox clues me in that it stopped a popup so I can approve the site, I'm in. Though, I'd like to see a "one time" authorization. As in, I'm on some website I don't intend to be at again, I need to see one popup to complete some task, and that's it. I don't want it on my whitelist, I just want to see the one popup. Sort of like a firewall. Do I want to allow this: once, always, not this time, never.
I actually spent several hours researching this because I was getting them in Firefox on OS X, but not Safari or Firefox on Linux. When my roommate started getting them on Linux I was quite surprised.
In every case I eventually tracked it down to either Flash or Java objects loaded into a page that requested a window be opened. Also in every case it seemed to be a well known advertising site that the object originated from.
The reason I never got any in Safari but did in Firefox is because I use Safari as my main browser so I've got PithHelmet installed, which comes with a healthy list of things to block, whereas I use Firefox only for testing so I've got little to nothing listed in my AdBlock rules. At work where I use a Linux desktop I have a healthy list of AdBlock rules.
If you're concerned about your privacy, avoiding ads, or popups you need to have at minimum AdBlock, CookieCuller and X installed for Firefox. If you're using Safari, PithHelmet is absolutely the best.
I too noticed this, but contrary to most, realised that they must simply be doing what has been possible for a long time but which no one had really bothered with, with the exception of porn sites and other spyware "value adders", until now.
Basically, it just uses the age old technique of using the document.write method, but obfuscated, to write other, obfuscated tags which are not recognized by the blocker as being new script tags, which themselves call a new obfuscated pop.js code that actually, in yet another round of obfuscation, produces the actual pop-under code: In essence, if one can block any request for the server of the obfuscated pop.js, or pop.cgi or whatever code, one will be in peace for a while. This can be done via adding the following lines to the hosts file on Windows (C:Windows(or WinNT)\System32\drivers\etc\HOSTS) or on Linux or MacOSX (/etc/hosts) or simply via your firewall software, which I'm sure we all use, don't we?
127.0.0.1 www.fastclick.net
127.0.0.1 media.fastclick.net
I have the code from the above server, as used by scienceblog.com, but I won't post it, as it's copyrighted, because the last thing I want is some internet low life trying to sue me for their own low life purposes.
if you see PopUps in Firefox, please file them here : https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25383 1 (no link, Bugzilla doesnt like /. links)
Go look at Google maps and Gmail. You can do some really good stuff now with Javascript, particularly as you can make a request back to the server with it and update part of the page without a reload.
Like any web tech it can be abused, but if you are a half decent developer the reason you are putting in JavaScript is to make the app a better experience for the user.
Maybe you want a world of basic pages and lots orf reloads, but most user seem not to.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17607 9
- go to about:config
- right-click and select New/Integer preference
- make a pref called "privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins"
- set the value 2
Now plugins are treated just like javascripts trying to open popups--they get blocked by the popup blocker. You have the option then to show the popup or to allow them for that site if you want.
If there's some way to disable java/javascript/plugins per-website, please let me know.
flashblock replaces all flash with an (F) icon, which can be clicked, enabling the flash to play. 99% of the time i don't want flash, but in the case of strongbad, of course, i click :)