Okay, I’ve had a unwanted pop-up window show itself for the last several days. It happens whenever I connect myself to the internet. No matter what sight I am on, a window will open itself every hour or so from some sight I would never attend.
I was thinking it was junkmail from the sights I attend, but it happens at sights that have never, or would never, resort to this sort of crap advertising. I think it’s a cookie placed a while ago.
What do I have to do to delete this advertising from my computer? I know it activates itself whenever I connect to the web. Where can I find the cookie to delete that it never bothers me again? Or better yet, where would this cookie attach itself, since I am bound to come across it again?
What I usually do is turn java and cookies off, unless a web site I visit needs them on. It definitely cuts out pop windows. Netscape is easier, at least for me, to do this with.
I’ve noticed that alot of freeware programs, such as Audiogalaxy Satellite, will install web browser commonets. Im not sure what half of them do. What I would do is go into Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel, and uninstall anything you don’t recognize.
Lavasoft offers a free utility to search for and remove unwanted cookies and “spyware” applications that often get packaged along with other downloads. It’s called Ad-Aware, and can be downloaded here: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/aaw.html
It’s pretty friendly – it offers you a list of all the annoying things it finds before it gets rid of them so you don’t have to worry about it deleting things without your permission.
I’ve been using a free utility for a couple months now, called “popup killer”.
I can’t recall where I found it, something like freedownloads.com or some such shareware (do a google for Popup killer).
Anyway, it’s just great. Zaps windows immediately, has options in case you want to allow certain pop ups for certain sites and, best of all, you can download (any time you want) updates of their user-compiled list of banned ads. Really saves time for modem surfers like myself.
Sorry if this sounds (ironically) like a paid endorsement (it’s not).
Try it, you’ll like it.
Popup Killer is not surprisingly at http://www.popup-killer.com and generally helps a lot, though I find its setup tough for excluding things you don’t want zapped, like search IE windows for searching or Organizing Favorites in web sites.
You may have been Gatored, or one of those ad companies that you don’t know you signed up for, but you did because you forgot to uncheck a box when you signed up for another service that you actually wanted.
Note: That was the world’s worst sentence. I know it, and I’m proud of it
Check you icon trays. Is there an unusual icon down there? Check “Add/Remove Programs”. Is gator.com in there or something like that?
Somewhere you agreed to let these people advertise, and you don’t even know you did it. That’s what makes them so insidious.
