Need Help With Popups

[glears]

Can someone explain to me how pop ups work. From my knowledge, I understood that some sites have popups in their scripts which is fine. But I'm getting some anoying pop ups from just about any site I go to. I could be playing a game on my pc and all of a sudden, I get booted out of the game for a pop up. This is not that gray window that openned because messenger had openned a port of some sort. One main site that keeps coming up is "xlime.optimizer". The one that keeps messing my game while I play is some deal about "It found sasser worm on my pc, purchase blah blah blah". I'm getting loads of popups from Yahoo which I had not gotten before. How can I remove these anoying popups. There's got to be a file on my pc that triggers this. Can someone help?

[YeOldeStonecat]

Several methods...you most likely have adware on your computer without you knowing it, which helps bring popups to you. Also some sites just have them.

1) For those sites that have them, install the Google Toolbar into Internet Explorer, has a built in popup stopper, and no ad/spyware in it unlike many other toolbars.
http://toolbar.google.com/ select the "Disable Advanced Features" when running through the install.

2) Now to get rid of the ad/spyware you've accumulated over time, download and install the latest Lavasoft AdWare
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Make sure you update it, and run a scan, remove what you find.
*and*
Pepki's Spybot Search and Destroy
http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download
Again, make sure you update it first (much like antivirus software), scan, and remove.

[Mytflyguy]

The Pictures are not here .... Because I don't have time to reformat for a messsageboard post ... but here is a tutorial I wrote a while back ( most of the info came from this site , I just compressed , formated and made it easier for the noobs to understand ... ( not that you are )

A little tutorial I wrote a while back ... Pretty simple to follow I think , Will make a big difference in spyware/adware file found on your PC ... Also greatly reduces Pop ups ....



Tired of constant pop up ads ?? Getting them even when you aren’t connected to the Internet ??

If any of you have tried raising your "Privacy" settings in Internet tools, you most likely ran into the same issue I did. Too many websites require cookies to be allowed in order for them to be viewable, thereby making it not a very practical solution.

Here are a few basic *Free* tips that can help you eliminate the ones you have and on average reduce the number of " Ad Ware/Spyware " cookies put on your desktop by 95% , While still allowing you to view all websites.

A little background:

Pops up ads are a result of files being downloaded to your system from Internet websites. Some are from the website itself, most are from 3rd party advertisers who pay that website to "Piggyback" cookies onto your system. Some of these are also known as "Spyware" in which your Internet surfing habits are tracked and the information sent back to the parent company. In this way they get a census of where people go and where the best places to advertise are. I don’t know about you , but this pisses me off ! Not only does it invade your privacy , it also uses up your valuable Internet bandwidth ( Slowing down your internet connection) in order to transfer this info . Some free programs ( especially Kazaa ) are riddled with Spyware and suggested to either avoid , or purchase the paid versions which are free of Ad ware.

While the tips below will not stop this completely, I found that it reduced my number of 40-50 Ad ware files/day to about 4-5 /month. I still receive the occasion pop-up from certain websites, but no where near the level I once did. You can however purchase full versions of some of these programs to completely eliminate this issue.

So here we go with some tips:

1-First thing you should do, is delete your current cookies.

To do this:

Open Internet explorer and go to "Tools" and click on "Internet options" in the top menu bar.







Under the "Temporary Internet files" you will want to:

· Click "Delete cookies" and click OK

· Click "Delete files" and check the option to delete offline content, then click OK.

· Click on "Settings" and check the option for " Every visit to page" and change the amount of disk space used to a variable between 50-100 MB , Click OK ( Windows uses a set percentage of hard drive space for this number which is WAAAAAAAAY more than you will ever need)







By deleting all cookies , you will need to go back and sign in to all of your favorite sites that once held your passwords and User ID’s … They will hold them again don’t worry.







2- Now we want to stop the "Piggy back" Cookies from getting on your hard drive.

While still under "Internet options" go to the "Privacy" Tab at the top:

Here you will:

· Click the "Advanced" button



· Click the "Override cookie handling" option

· Click on "Allow" first party cookies, "Block" third party cookies and "Always allow Session cookies" ( This will allow you to store user sign in and password info for your favorite sites, as well as allow you to visit the sites that require cookies to be enabled).









3- Finally we are going to get rid of the ad-ware and spyware already on your system.

( WARNING : Some programs require ad ware on your system to work, such as Kazaa and others, by removing the ad ware they install, you will not be able to use them, This is why I stay away from Kazaa myself , or suggest the paid version of Kazaa Lite that has no ad ware, you can however reinstall the program afterwards and it will reinstall the ad ware needed)



There are two free programs that seem to be the most popular, "Ad-Aware 6.0" and "Spy-bot: Search and Destroy". The paid versions give you more power and permanently stop all ad ware, but with the above settings it’s really not necessary.

Ad-aware 6.0 = http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=506 ( click on the American flag in the lower right hand corner )

Spy-Bot Search and Destroy = http://beam.to/spybotsd ( Scroll down to a download site )



One or the other should be fine, I prefer Ad-Aware 6.0 myself for ease of use, and the available options. Running both is highly suggested the very first time, because if one misses something the other usually catches it. This is at your discretion. Be sure to read the screens during set up, run the " Update" feature on both to get the latest list of known ad/spy ware and to delete all of the files found.

After running one or both of these programs for the first time you should come up with approximately 125-175 Ad ware items. (Maybe more maybe less depending on your service providers pre-built ad ware protection)



At this point you can close all of your windows and reboot. I would suggest periodically ( once every few weeks updating and running one or the other of these programs about the same time you run your Back-up, Virus Scan and Disk Defragmenter ….. You all DO run these right ??? If not, you should … It’s like changing the oil, air filter and spark plugs in your car … periodic running of these basic systems , help keep it healthy productive and efficient.

Additonal tips:

1- *Reminded to me by YeOldStonecat

For those that use google 15,000 times a day like I do, I would suggest getting the google toolbar plug-in for your browser. ( http://toolbar.google.com ) It integrates itself as a new toolbar below the standard one that allows you to direct search from any website instead of going to the http://www.google.com website. It also comes with a free pop-up blocker that is one click away from turning on and off.





This is strictly option of course.

2- *Submitted by a good friend Dan ( a.k.a. Likwid )

The Tech Support Guy forum: http://forums.techguy.org/ is a very good place you can check out for help with pop-ups, viruses, etc. If you are having any particular problems, they have a utility called Hijack This, which will look at all programs running on your system. You can run H.T. and copy a log of it's results to their forum and they will make reccomendations of what is legit and what is not. It's a very helpful and friendly forum. Here is a link to download and try Hijack This: http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/hijackthis.zip

I highly reccommend this site and the H.T. utility.

If you have any questions or any other suggestions please feel free to let me know and I may add them in ....



TheFlyOne

[Mytflyguy]

The Pictures are not here .... Because I don't have time to reformat for a messsageboard post ... but here is a tutorial I wrote a while back ( most of the info came from this site , I just compressed , formated and made it easier for the noobs to understand ... ( not that you are )

P.S. As you can see it's slightly out of date with the version Numbers and Website info ...

[koldchillah]

good job on the tutorial there Mytyflyguy , but theres a couple of things I would add.

More and more people are going straight into the Ad Aware, and Spybot apps and forgetting a very basic and helpful step. ADD/REMOVE programs should be the first stop after IE cookies and temp files have been dumped and before any anti-spyware apps are used.

We all know that Add/remove programs sucks at uninstalling apps and a majority of spyware apps won't even be listed, but thats not really why I recommend going in there first... What it does is it gives a chance for some of those bad apps that do show up in the list, to undo things in the registry that the anti-spyware apps aren't going to necessarily fix the correct way. (just plain quarantining and deleting stuff isn't always the best solution..) Also in add/remove programs you can identify many parent apps that will be re-installing those little spyware apps immediately after Ad Aware removes them.

I typically use Ad Aware immediately after removing all the suspicious apps from the Add/remove programs list first.. Then I run Spybot, CWShredder, and HiJackThis just to be sure. Then if there is still something bothering the system, I search for additional hosts files that are sometimes hidden elsewhere on the disk which causes the anti-spyware apps to miss completely. Then I may even run the winsock fix if there is still something fishy going on. Even with all that, I've still seen a couple of PC's that I just plain had to delete the user profile or reformat and let them start fresh..

Spyware is outta control these days, especially for the IE users.. I can't wait for a good corporate anti-spyware app to come out that can be managed centrally on a large network at minimal impact on traffic & client PC performance. If there's already something out that does that, I'm all ears, er eyes but spyware apps seem to use forms of unconventional warfare on the users that is hard for software developers to fight using conventional means, if that makes any sense to anyone..

[glears]

Thanks guys. I'll give that a try tonight.

[Mytflyguy]

Good advice Kold Chilla ..... If you want to cut that down a little and make it slightly more end user friendly I'd like to add it in , with respects to you and your additions of course ( Just like I did Stone Cat ) . This was on the #4 spot for Anti Spyware in the Google searh for a hot minute Due to it being posted on a certain webpage with large coverage area ... I hand it out to friends and fellow employees all the time.


P.S. I fixed the original with my Saved MB version ...

[konomi]

Download and use FIREFOX from http://www.mozilla.org It has an automatic pop up blocker, it runs faster and uses less system resources than IE. I haven't use IE since I started using FireFox about a year ago. The only time I do is when I want to go to microsoft site and there are several IE only site about the web.
:2cool: :2cool: