[catwoman]

Help! I need a good pop-up blocker! I litterally feel like I'm being assaulted for being on the web with all the pop-ups lately! Anybody know of a good one (free)?

[mb]

visit www.smartin-designs.com for a hosts file which blocks many irritating ads. pop-ups may still pop, but will often be empty. or popupstopper (popupstopper.com, has a free version) and many more.

[Malachai Constant]

Try Using Mozilla (free) http://www.mozilla.org/ as a browser, you can also use norton Internet Security if you insist on IE.

[MCaver]

Norton Internet Security is fantastic, although the 2002 version was easier to configure for specific websites than 2003.

[Pop Warmer]

Once I went on a backpack trip with my football buddies. I made some weisenheimer comment in the morning and was mobbed by pop-tarts in my pup tent. So I'm looking for a pop-tart blocker. By the way, being mobbed by pop-ups is not as bad as doing 15 pull-ups.

[Dayhike Mike]

I recommend Pop-Up Stopper Free from PanicWare. Adds a small icon in your taskbar with a red X through it to indicate it's blocking pop-ups. You can double-click on the icon to re-enable them temporarily, or hold down the Control key to enable pop-ups momentarily. Michael

[Tom]

Pop up stopper really blows for links that open up in a new window. Any way to disable it for that?

[Sore Feet]

Pop-up Stopper is great, imo. If you wanna open a new window, hold down Control while clicking the link. It however, does not kill Flash popups at the moment (but fortunately, they aren't that much of a widespread nuisance just yet).

[catwoman]

I downloaded pop-up stopper. I guess I'll see how it goes. And I'll have to remember the control button thing.

[catwoman]

So far so good. And I haven't had a problem with clicking on links - not even needing to use the control key.

[Dayhike Mike]

Woo hoo! Sounds like another satisfied customer!

[MounTAIN Woman]

I use Norton Internet Security (2000), but I still get pop-ups. But it definitely rocks as far as blocking ads while I surf. While I was surfing this forum, I had an attempted attack - one of those backdoor sub-seven Trojan horse programs attempting to access an unused port. I don't know where these come from, but about once a month, I get one of these things. Anyone know anything about these? I've also noticed that when I download something for free, I'll start getting bombarded by their "mailing list" of "upgrade now to the latest and greatest" pop-up ads, and any other company they happen to sell their IP addresses to.

[Dayhike Mike]

Two questions for you: Regarding getting portscanned, have you thought about getting a hardware based firewall? With the number of vulnerabilities that have been/will be found in Microsoft's software and services, I might recommend going with an external box to add a layer of protection from the outside world. They're fairly cheap these days. Your second comment sounds more like you're referring to spam than pop-up ads. In that case, just make sure you give tossable addresses anytime you register freeware. If you're referring to something else, you may have installed more than you bargained for with those "free" packages. They're typically bundled with spyware that watch where you surf and allow the advertising you receive to be targeted to your perceived interests. If that's the case, I'd recomend checking out LavaSoft's Ad-aware and see if it can't remove or detect any spyware installed on your machine. Michael

[Tom]

[MCaver]

I use Norton Internet Security as an ad-blocker/firewall, Norton Anti-Virus for virus protection, Ad-Aware to clean up what gets through, and SpamNet for spam blocking and I've found them to be a pretty good combined defense. I see very few online ads or popups, and 80+% of the 2000 spams/week I get are instantly deleted. About once a week I'll run Ad-Aware to check my system, usually just cleaning up cookies. Just FYI, a vast majority of those "attempted attacks" that NIS reports are probably mis-classified. NIS doesn't really know what is hitting your computer, but where it's hitting you (i.e. what port number) and it uses that to classify the "attack" based on what is known to use that port. So just because something hit you on a specific port doesn't mean it was necessarily what NIS said it was. It could be anything, really. But that doesn't mean you should give it up. Anyone with a persistent internet conenction (DSL, cable modem, etc) should have some kind of software firewall. Hardware firewalls are overkill for 99.99% of the people, IMO.