Pop-ups- how to rid myself of them

[Fuzzy Bear]

I would like a cheap or free solution to those dern ads that pop-up continually and interfere with my inability to write and spell. Does anybody have one? You could count it as a Good Turn project for a poor unfortunate one suffering from the pop-up aggravations.

FB

 

[JimmyD]

Google Toolbar has a block out feature that works very well and i'm happy with it.

 

http://toolbar.google.com/

 

They have an FAQ for any of your problems.(This message has been edited by JimmyD)

[Zahnada]

Go to http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ and download "Ad-Aware". It's free (at least certain versions of it are). If you get reoccuring pop-ups, most likely you have some sort of cookie that's attached itself to your computer. Ad-Aware cleans off many of the annoying cookies. You might be surprised at how much junk is hiding in your computer after you clean it just once. It's free and it's easy to use. I highly recommend it.

[hops_scout]

We use SpyBot-Search and Destroy. Also, we've been told google toolbar is great as well. We also have Pop Up Stopper or something like that.

[Twocubdad]

I use the Earthlink blocker and it works well.

 

How about something good for spam? I don't need "enhancement," cheap prescriptions drugs or the CD the government has banned.

[captainron14]

I have the "Yahoo" toolbar with "popup blocker". So far it works great.

Now about spam blockers....

I have tried a few, off shareware sites and have found that they are too much trouble.

You have to "train" the blocker to recognize the Spam. After you have manualy blocked the spam the first time, its blocked. But not until you do it first.

I have tried to reply to the sites themselves, to "unsubscribe", but 9 times out of 10, it never works.

Anyone have a answer? A cheep answer?

[purcelce]

I use the yahoo blocker and it's great.

[KA6BSA]

For more than a year I have been using a free popup stopper from www.panicware.com that works well and lets normal windows open by holding the CTRL key down. I also generally like Lavasoft Ad-aware but on one of my computers installing it scrambled up all the windows icons in the start menu. Despite uninstalling it sometimes the icons still come up misplaced. You can delete old cookies with most browsers without searching for them with special software, and it is a good idea to periodically clean them out, but save any you need for sites you still use. If you delete the cookies for TV Guide you will need to register again to see your program listing. To get rid of all cookies on IE pull down the Tools, Internet Options menu, on the General tab click the Delete Cookies button. Other than some minor issues like the TV Guide I mentioned, deleting all your cookies usually doesn't do much noticable harm and may give you a much more secure computer as many cookies are data-miners not following the polite rules for simply making surfing more efficient. No matter what you do with popup stoppers or tossing cookies there will still be some web pages with pop-unders and sneaky browser hijack methods to get their garbage through to you.

[Overtrained]

As to the spam email question, there are a couple of simple solutions that work sometimes.

1. Your email can usually be set to block all incoming emails unless the sender is in your address book. The down side is when someone new sends something, you have to add them to your adderss book first.

2. As someone else suggested, as you identify spam, use your tool bar to block that sender or any messages that contain certain words. Unfortunetly, most "good" spammers work around this by having thousands of email accounts and by misspelling commone words, i.e V1@gra, etc so you will still get them.

3. I have heard of a website that you can have your emails go to, look at them there and decide what ones you want to keep. Those get sent to you inbox, the rest get returned as undeliverable. Then the spammers take that address off their system. I haven't found this site yet though.

4. The last way I know of is to talk to your email provider and ask what they are doing to block spam. Many can do it and aren't. You may want to find a provider that does.

 

YIS

 

Overtrained

[EagleInKY]

I'll second the mention of two great products. ad-aware from lavesoft will find all the spyware loaded on your PC. You'll be shocked and amazed at the number of things it finds the first time you run it.

 

Second, the google toolbar does a nice job of stopping annoying popups while using IE. A note of warning, however, many websites use popups legitimately, and you need to watch to see if a popup was stopped.

 

Regarding spam, there's a neat free tool called mailwasher (www.mailwasher.net) that allows you to preview, blacklist and reject e-mail. It sends a note back as if your e-mail address was invalid. Unfortunately, I've been using it for about a year and haven't seen a decline. It just provides a simple way for me to purge them before receiving them in my e-mail package.

 

Good luck.