A friend of mine is having a problem with his computer at the moment:
He keeps getting pop up windows on his computer, even when he is offline, advertising porn. What can he do to stop this?
He is running Win 98, IE.
Start looking for the program that’s popping them up. Check Add/Remove Programs for anything suspicious. Try running Ad-Aware to get rid of spyware. Don’t download programs in the future if you (or he) don’t know what they do.
I’m no expert, but I suggest your friend go into Tools>Internet Options in Internet Explorer and selects “delete all cookies” and “deletes all files (including offline content)”. This may help.
Additionaly I would run a virus check (personally I keep a virus checker running all the time) just to make sure nothing malicious is happening in the background.
I have heard of software that can intercept pop-ups, though I have not used any myself. Try searching ZDNet.com for freeware to do this.
This may not apply to your friend but I have noticed that visiting certain “off-colour” sites can start hundreds of pop-ups - it is all part of a scam by the web site owners to increase traffic to their sites. Avoiding these sites will probably help.
Finally, are you sure that the pop-ups are happening when disconnected from the net? I have never experienced this myself (which is not to say it is not possible). Good luck fixing the problem.
We’ve tried 3 different anti-pop up programs. They weren’t very effective when dealing with porn pop ups.
What ticks me off is, a guy can be on a porn site and click on the wrong thing and WHAM! Your in a world of sh*t! Just try getting back to the page you were on. This is criminal. I was already on their web site, why are they attacking me with more ads?
Deleating files, cookies, etc only has mixed success also.
I swear by Pop-up Stopper. My friend said, “That pop-up stopper is so good for porno sites.”
I’ll second that recommendation. No more X-10, Verizon or Orbitz ads (porn sites aren’t the only pop-up sites, but might be the biggest abusers).
Your friend may also want to consider playing in a less rough playground. Tommy’s Bookmarks and Persian Kitty generally won’t link to annoying porno sites.
I use AdAware, Norton Internet Security, and Pop-up Killer, which regrettably lost official support just last week.
Has he installed anything like audiogalaxy recently?
The guys on portal of evil discovered that audiogalaxy was installing something called VX2.cc that was poping up ads, even on sites that don’t have popups (like their own, which is what tipped them off)
http://www.poenews.com/inhouse/vx2.htm
I’ve switched to using Mozilla, and one of the reasons for that was that it has preference settings that give you a lot more control over what scripting can and can’t do - there’s a checkbox for preventing scripts from opening unrequested windows. That’s a really nice feature.
I use Mozilla 0.9.8 almost exclusively now… except when I’m using Konqueror. Both Konqueror and Mozilla offer far more detailed control over Annoying Java(script) Pop-Ups than anything from Microsoft, and Konqueror can show you the content of each cookie as it arrives.
As for the spyware, going over to Linux for general surfing removed most oppurtunities for separate spyware programs, since these tend to be tailored towards Windows. (I run SuSE Lnux 7.3, but at times I do drop back to Windows though to test newly-built web pages… )
I use Mozilla 0.9.8 almost exclusively now… except when I’m using Konqueror. Both Konqueror and Mozilla offer far more detailed control over Annoying Java(script) Pop-Ups than anything from Microsoft, and Konqueror can show you the content of each cookie as it arrives.
As for the spyware, going over to Linux for general surfing removed most oppurtunities for separate spyware programs, since these tend to be tailored towards Windows. (I run SuSE Lnux 7.3, but at times I do drop back to Windows though to test newly-built web pages… )
A great brower to use that has a built in pop-up stopper is Opera 6.1 . This is an awesome broswer which I would definately reccomend for use instead of Internet Explorer. Check out some of its features and give it a try.
I’m sorry, that is Opera 6.01, not 6.1.
I am using Opera at the moment and never have to worry about pop-ups 
It’s funny because I see sites that say “subscribe to our website and get rid of those annoying pop-up adverts”
I just scratch my head and say “oh yeah? What pop-ups are those? MUAH-HAHAHA” 