I keep seeing, on perfectly innocuous websites, banner ads for miniature wireless cameras. You know the ones – you’ve probably seen the ads too: they show a hand holding a small circular device with a lens, and a picture of a woman.
Now I’m the sort of guy who tries to gives people the benefit of the doubt, but I can’t help looking at these ads and thinking “Hmmmm…tiny cameras you can hide, don’t need wires, you can view remotely — and women. Not women holding the cameras or looking at a TV screen, mind you; just pictures of women. What, exactly, is the marketing strategy here?”
Is it:
a) They think women are more likely to buy these devices.
b) They think the cameras will be used primarily as “nanny-cams”.
or is it
c) something more unsavory.
I find it disturbing that this sort of “nudge nudge, wink wink” marketing to voyeurs goes on at all, let alone on “normal” websites. It’s just… creepy.
I’ve grown to hate that thing! I can’t go anywhere on the web without getting some variant of that pop-up add. Pop-up adds are almost universally loathed anyway, so I can’t see how they expect to make any friends. Yeah, I know: Exposure == sales.
I’m wondering (Hoping?) if this isn’t a real clever ploy to flush the closet perverts out into the open?
I saw somewhere a piece of software you could download that prevented those popup ads from appearing. I don’t remember a name, though. Do any of the teeming millions recognize this? Has anyone installed it, and have a recommendation?
I had the exact same reaction the first time I saw that ad (and they had a different woman, too)
Half the time I can close the popups before anything is displayed. I’m sure that’s helping a lot. There’s one popup ad that is so graphics heavy, I have closed it every time before any of the ad is up.
I downloaded and use Guidescope. It works pretty well. Makes you view the web through their proxy server, which then takes all of the undesired ad content out. You can also set it to take specific images you don’t want to load out.
I like it.
I don’t use it all of the time, though. Just on the slower machines. I got it specifically for animated banner ads that made my browser crash.
Y’know, it’s not just perverts you need to be concerned about. There’s potential here for other types of crime. To give an extreme example, one episode of the TV shoe Columbo had a murder committed using just such a camera. But you can snoop on combinations, passwords, etc. using such a device (well-hidden) as well. The creative mind boggles.
Yeah, I use Webwasher. It works pretty well, and is very flexable. It’s free to individuals, and does lots and lots, like cookie filtering, limiting how long an animated gif is played (if at all), and filters out advertising banners on websites, too. Great tool.
I use Pop-Up Stopper. It’s free, and very effective. It won’t even allow you to open a second instance of your browser unless you hold down the CTRL key while doing so. I recommend it highly.
I used POW! for awhile, but I had to enter each pop-up in it’s list to prevent it from returning. It was still hell if I got caught in a clickthrough loop. Pop-Up Stopper prevents the loop from ever starting. POW! did work exactly as it’s supposed to though.
To further the highjack, I wonder if anyone really makes any money from clickthroughs. They’re so annoying that I can’t really see anyone spending any cash on any of the ads they kick up.