Click Yes to download and install - Yes/ No/ X/ ???

Factual Questions
1

We all got those popups from time to time, if you say you don’t then you lie.

A little popup window that says something like:
Click Yes to download and install ‘evil computer program that will steal all your personal info ont his computer and broadcast it on the interent’

The Black Horse ensures it is safe.

You are given 2 obvious choices and 3 not obvious ones:

Yes
No

the ‘X’ box in the upper right hand corner
Ctrl-Alt-Del>end task
power switch

(othe choices like turnign off the modem, taking a hammer to the harddrive are not listed)

Now for my questions:

In the computer world does NO always mean NO? If I click NO could a bad program take it as a YES (be programed to have 2 yes boxes, just one is labeled NO?

Could that X box also be taken as a YES?

2

NO could mean anything. Its just a character string. The function you invoke by pressing the button could be anything.

But there could be legal ramifications for doing different things, but I’m not sure.

3

The uppermost X should always close the window without further problems. Clicking on any of the keys, no matter what they say, could produce any number of results. Always click the uppermost X.

(I never get popups, and I am not a liar.)

4

One thing to do is to pay attention to the pointer. If it turns into a little hand (like it does when you’re over a link) no matter where you are in the popup, then the entire thing is just a picture for you to click on. No matter where you click on it, it’s going to do the same thing. Sometimes even the max/min/X at the top are part of the picture. So in that case NO means YES.

5

Not sure about the X, though. I think pressing that ‘must’ close the window, although the window itself could invoke functions in the event of a closure, like open another window.

6

But sometimes the programmer can make it so the window will show up WITHOUT the standard minimize/maximize/close buttons at the top and then add their own as part of the picture. Again you can tell if when you hover over them the mouse turns to a hand and not an arrow like it should be over those buttons.

7

Control-W will close the active window in Internet Explorer. It’s the single best shortcut in IE.

8

I typically surf a few hours a day, doing background research in a wide variety of topics for books, friends and personal research. I haven’t seen a pop-up like the one you describe this year, and maybe this millenium. If it weren’t for complaints like yours, I’d think they were just another extinct web gimmick from the 90’s.

Of course, I take appropriate precautions. Though my house LAN is behind a hardware firewall, I use a software firewall because it can be configured to block pop-ups and scripts from all but a handful of sites I personally exclude. I run other privacy, ad-blocking, and security software as well. I don’t use MSIE as a browser, and on the browsers I do use, I have in-browser software installation and similar features disabled in the configuration menu (doing this one step should block all “install this software/plug-in?” pop-ups, but I can’t testify to this, since I’m not interested in disabling my other protections to check.)

Is that a lot of hassle? No. When I set up a new computer or OS at my house, it takes an extra 15 minutes to install the extra programs and set the configuration properly. Since you say these pop-ups are ubiquitous to the point of inevitability, it sounds like your spent more time this year dealing with pop-ups (and their attendant risks) than I did blocking them with a few (IMHO) essential safety measures.

But thanks for calling me a liar in advance. Would you happen to have some unimpeachable cite on for the impossibility of blocking software and plug-in installation pop-ups? I’d like to print it out and take it to the nearest asylum, since I am clearly delusional.

9

you said

in repsonse to

but you also said:

So this leads me to believe you have gotten them from time to time, though back in the 90’s and also have gotten some pop’ups of a different type.

I bet you don’t masterbate either :wink:

Ok, Ok maybe what I said was a little strong, then again even if what you do is go to clean sites I just can’t beleive you don’t get the ‘you must install quicktime, flash, adobi acrobat reader’ to continue popups. You need adobi to view many of the cite here on the SDMB and it seem slike they are always updating that think.

10

No sweat on coming across a bit strong. I started it. I did regret my tone a bit after I hit send. [BTW “this millenium”, by my reckoning, began Jan 1, 2001, but that’s another can of worms] I don’t get them ‘from time to time’. I ‘got’ them. Past tense. It’s like saying “we all inhale pure amniotic fluid from time to time”. We all did it in the past, but not anymore, and certainly not ‘from time to time’’.

BTW, I don’t think of myself as surfing only ‘clean’ sites, though I don’t actively surf porn. Porn is fine in my book, but frankly a bit boring by the time I finished my teens. (You’d lose the bet on masturbation, however, if you really must know).

If I want a plug-in like Acrobat, Flash, or Quicktime, I install it separately using an executable downloaded from the manufacturer. Many of the responses to the OP point out risks of trusting pop-up installs, especially since one can never know the ‘official’ download site of an apparently reputable plug-in. Is “acrobatdownload.com” owned by Adobe or is it a throwaway domain of John Q Crook? By the time I checked it out, I could have already downloaded a version from Adobe directly. There are only a few broadly used plug-ins, and tI install them along with my antivirus, firewall, zip program, and other essentials when I set up a computer. (Obscure plug-ins, even legitmate ones, can have security flaws I am unlikely to read about)

I do not, indeed, see those pop-up requests that the OP described. Ever. If you turn off that set of features in a browser (even MSIE) you may still be told that you need a application helper or plug-in, but you won’t get it shoved on you.

I probably should have been less snarky, but this is advice I give my friends and colleagues as well, and I’ve seen the mess that can result from not following it. Even a knowledgeable surfer can suffer a slip of the finger, or click ‘yes’ when tired.

I can’t say I’ve ever been appreciably inconvenienced by this kind of ‘safe surfing’., and I don’t know anyone who willingly ‘went back’ after trying it for a few months.

11

Alt + f4 baby, always a precious thing when dealing with spam / pop-ups and other junk that the internet is now plagued with…

12

For what it’s worth, I use Mozilla Firebird, and I don’t get the pop-ups anymore either. I don’t even need to use ad-aware, etc, in order to stop them.

As far as plugins, many don’t seem to install very well for my browser, and I’ve gotten along without them quite well.

Only Kazaa gives me problems, and that has more to do with it being inherantly spamware than anything else.

13

Or right click on the program in the taskbar & select close works for me. If I get a website with tons of windows, that trick works great, as it gives the option to close group. Test: Click notepad 4 times. Right clik on it in the taskbar & select: close group