It was about a few weeks ago when it happened. Here, of all places. Popup ads. And I have my popup blocker cranked to the absolute maximum (and it’s been working just fine).
I’ve seen this happen a few other places, too, including the Doonesbury site and Amazon.com. Amazon’s so bad now, in fact, that I now have to shut it down entirely in my security settings to do any shopping in peace.
This is unlike anything I’ve seen before. It’s a handful of apparently incredibly desperate advertisers, and they key in on certain commercial websites. Whatever they’re doing causes the ad to appear, and nothing short of a complete shutdown (which prevents logging in, among other things) seems to stop them. There’s a short delay after the page loads, as if it’s searching for a weakness.
Anything at all I can do about this? If it matters, I’m using Internet Explorer and my protection software is Symantic Endpoint.
(I swear, half of these worthless slimeballs don’t care if they never make a penny, they just want to spread filth all over the Internet and brag about it…)
Sounds to me like you have some malware on your computer.
Download, update and run Malwarebytes (from Malwarebytes.org) and Adaware.
I usually suggest running them both, rebooting and rerunning them. If it doesn’t come back clean the second time, do it a third time in safe mode.
Try using another browser. I’m partial to Google Chrome (you can import your bookmarks and saved passwords in a blink). After that, install AdSweep, Adblock Plus, Ghostery, and FlashBlock. If they persist, shut your computer into Safe Mode with networking and run your antivirus and anti-spyware stuff.
If you don’t want to do all that, run the anti-spyware stuff. If you don’t have an anti-spyware program, try Spybot. If you have some program(s), try updating them and run them. If it is something bad in your system, look for some curious happenings, like if something doesn’t let you update properly. After that, try it in Safe Mode with networking and that should clear you up.
NoScript - Only allow the necessary site script and block most of the ways you get ads. I added this because a couple sites had really obnoxious aggressive ads that Adblock Plus did not kill.
Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus Pop-up Addon
Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus
Flashblock - Only get an arrow for Flash that you can click to view.
I agree that the ads are almost certainly not coming from the websites. Particularly suspicious is the idea that he’s getting pop-up ads on Amazon.com, which doesn’t have ads, as far as I can tell.
I put up a thread about this a few months/years ago about this, and the response I got was that they get through because they’re popunders, not popups.
Adaware takes care of this was the advice I got, but it seems new versions of firefox take care of this as well.
Man, this Google Chrome is something else. EVERYTHING about it is better than Internet Explorer. Everything. Faster, more versatile, fewer errors and so far not a single razzafrakkin popunder (which would fall under my definition of an “extremely aggressive popup”). I’m bewildered that Microsoft has never addressed this issue. I mean, yeah, most complacent company in the history of mankind, but geez, something that annoying?
Thanks a million. You guys rock! (As if you needed to hear it from me. )
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