This is a first! I was looking at a post about Al Frankin and I got my first ever popup on this site. Say it aint so! I DO NOT want to have to fight these POS here in what I consider my computer home!

Has this been happening to anyone else? Make it stop!

not here.

By the way, did you know that your computer may be infected with a virus?

sounds like you have some ad-ware/spyware

I just read the same thread and no popups for me. Come to think of it, I never get popups.

try ad-aware from lavasoft....
that should do it....

It's you not us


GM  

Ditto on the virus theory. No popups here.

This one surprised me and I got rid of it before I could look at it to tell y'all what it was about. It had a likeness of a desktop and the title was "FREEZE" something.

What's this about a virus, arowneragain?

I ran ad/ware and found 59 hidden turds. They have been removed.

Quoted: This one surprised me and I got rid of it before I could look at it to tell y'all what it was about. It had a likeness of a desktop and the title was "FREEZE" something. What's this about a virus, arowneragain?

Bad joke, based on the popup I get every time I go to drudgereport.com

Quoted: Quoted: This one surprised me and I got rid of it before I could look at it to tell y'all what it was about. It had a likeness of a desktop and the title was "FREEZE" something. What's this about a virus, arowneragain? Bad joke, based on the popup I get every time I go to drudgereport.com

Butthole! You had me worried!

Sometimes the hot image links in the topics can trigger a pop-up ad that's already in your cache.

run ad-aware a couple times a week, keeps the browser running smoothly

Pangea cut back on the Viagra this should help....................... Hey your not BLACK anymore!

DL the google tool bar and use its popup blocker. IMHO, its better then the Windows version because it can be tuned off quickly in case a site needs to use pop-ups (like this site).

Oh, and the Google ToolBar is 500 kb IIRC, and not the 200 MB of SP2!  

Quoted: To be fair, MS added a pop-up blocker and a fairly decent (though certainly stripped down) software firewall to XP-SP2.  IE works just fine here, no popups. -Troy

Day late dollar short.  Until they get rid of CraptiveX, viruses will be a reality of the IE world.

Just get rid of it now.  Popups are only the most visible part of IE's deficiency.  The list is long and Microsoft isn't about to fix most of it.

FireFox, Opera, whatever.  As long as it's not IE.

hmmmmm.

the pop up virus trap.

I deem AR15.com not to be a popup trap.

Folks I'm a bit boggled and confused now after reading this entirely thru.
Some please Help!!!

Some here say "don't use IE", some say "Use AdAware" some say don't......
I get pop ups at the house (using RR) and don't get them at the office (also using RR)......
anyone in the know have an explanation?  General Akbar?  

I'm running wdw's XP and IE w/ RR if that helps......

wedge man, the its a trap is pretty funny but you got to use it less

Quoted: wedge man, the its a trap is pretty funny but you got to use it less

The other day I may have agreed with you, but now out of spite for  EagleArmsHBAR I am afraid that I can not do that.

Plus I will always post it in newbie saying hi threads.  That is just a personal war.

The only pop-ups I get at ARFCOM is when I'm looking at BOTD threads......

I have installed on all my computers at work and at home IE 6, Netscape 7.1, Mozilla 1.7 and Firefox 0.9.  The one I prefer is IE 6 with the Google toolbar/popup blocker installed.  The reason is that all Web pages that I encounter support IE fully; they don't all support the other browsers completely.

I like the other browsers and for a while earlier this year I used Mozilla and Firefox a lot, til I discovered that I was missing out on some things.

Quoted: Quoted: wedge man, the its a trap is pretty funny but you got to use it less The other day I may have agreed with you, but now out of spite for  EagleArmsHBAR I am afraid that I can not do that. Plus I will always post it in newbie saying hi threads.  That is just a personal war.

Wedge1082, if you ever stop posting trap warnings, I'll be very sad.  The world needs Ackbar.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: wedge man, the its a trap is pretty funny but you got to use it less The other day I may have agreed with you, but now out of spite for  EagleArmsHBAR I am afraid that I can not do that. Plus I will always post it in newbie saying hi threads.  That is just a personal war. Wedge1082, if you ever stop posting trap warnings, I'll be very sad.  The world needs Ackbar.

He will always be there for you when you need him.  That much I can promise you.

Quoted: I have installed on all my computers at work and at home IE 6, Netscape 7.1, Mozilla 1.7 and Firefox 0.9.  The one I prefer is IE 6 with the Google toolbar/popup blocker installed.  The reason is that all Web pages that I encounter support IE fully; they don't all support the other browsers completely.

Your perogative.  My computers need to function.  I have no time to screw around with exterminating virii on my computers, because that's how I make money.  If I spend two hours chasing viruses, that's two hours I'm not earning any money.  

Using IE increases your risk of catching a web born virus.  I don't care how up to date you keep your virus scanner, virus scanners don't fix the fatal flaw of holes in the software.

Think of it this way.  

IE = screwing a disease infected hooker with a rubber

You go right ahead.  Me, I'll stay off the websites that are so thoughtless to design their websites so they only work in IE.

ATTENTION WEB VENDORS:

If you build your website to work only in IE, I WILL TAKE MY BUSINESS ELSEWHERE.

thanks for the manifesto.

Quoted: Or, you could spend 2 minutes increasing the default (mild) security settings and turning off (or tightening up the security for) ActiveX, and you'd be just as safe as with any other browser. You can certainly criticize Microsoft's decision to ship Windows with low security thresholds as defaults, but these are user-adjustable settings for a reason; all you have to do is adjust those settings one time and you're good to go.  Why people refuse to do this, but will take the trouble to download and install a separate app instead, I still can't figure out. -Troy

As you know ActiveX isn't the only security flaw that can be exploited in IE.  If you do turn off ActiveX you will not be able to access sites that are dependent on it which is really the only reason to use it in the first place.  So what does that accomplish?

Firefox has additional functionality and many add on browser extensions that make it a far superior browser to IE. Keep in mind that it hasn't even been officially released yet.  As the product matures it will get even better then what it is now.  BTW, there is a browser extension available that allows you to open a web page in IE if you do come across a site that is improperly coded and doesn't operate correctly with Firefox.  I have personally come across only 3 or 4 sites that Firefox has a problem  with so I just open that page in IE.

Quoted: Or, you could spend 2 minutes increasing the default (mild) security settings and turning off (or tightening up the security for) ActiveX, and you'd be just as safe as with any other browser.

Well, in my specific case (and I realize this is unique to my computer) when I try to change the security settings on IE, it locks up the entire computer.  

You can certainly criticize Microsoft's decision to ship Windows with low security thresholds as defaults, but these are user-adjustable settings for a reason; all you have to do is adjust those settings one time and you're good to go.  Why people refuse to do this, but will take the trouble to download and install a separate app instead, I still can't figure out.

I criticize Microsoft for exactly that.  I don't know what brain trust came up with the idea of shipping every OS like that, but historically Microsoft has always erred on the side of insecurity.  Heck, Windows 98 came with file and printer sharing ON by default.

My gripes with Microsoft are many, but there are two legitimate reasons for not running IE, that no amount of add ons will fix:

1) most of your "out of the box" computer buyers are not savvy enough to know to go in and change security settings.  They plug their computer directly into a cable modem (which the cable company advises *groan*) which then turns their machine into a nice high speed virus distributing engine.  This hurts everyone that uses the internet, not just the end user.

2) IE is too "intimate" with the OS.  In an effort to dominate the web browser market, Microsoft "intigrated" their web browser into the OS, in order to make it seem IE was necessary to run the operating system.  This way every Windows computer was a huge billboard for IE.  And it worked.  85-90% of the Windows based systems still run IE.  Unfortunately, it also created a huge security threat.  Instead of running the browser application in "ring 3" of the operating system, where the operating system has conrtol over what hardware the application can talk to, prividing a layer of security, IE runs at "ring 0" with complete control over all hardware on the host system.  It's a virus writers dream.  Simply compromise the browser, and you can do anything you want on the host system.  

Like I said, to each his own.  I have no interest in making everyone run Firefox or Opera or anything else.  But in a world where connectivity is getting better every day, you better make sure that if you hook your PC onto a high speed link that the thing is locked down.  Not using IE is one of those simple steps.

I recently had an issue with Adware getting installed on my system. Ad-Aware, Spyware S&D, etc. etc. failed to find and fix the issue. Webroot's Spy Sweeper found and removed the VX2 adware that was running on my system. I would recommend downloading and running a deep scan (update the def files). Hope this helps. I am now a pretty big believer in Spy Sweeper from Webroot, since after using like 7 others, it is the only one that caught and removed the junk.

Quoted: Yes, MS *still* carries a big share of the responsibility, but let's be fair; the cable companies could easily include a software firewall with their install CD, and that would have eliminated a huge percentage of the problem.  There's plenty of blame to go around. -Troy

[Eric Cartman]Screw software firewalls[/Eric Cartman].  The cable/phone companies should be installing an integrated NAT Router/SPI Firewall/Modem for every broadband customer and provide support to properly configure it.  

I suggest you go to www.grc.com and do a Shields Up test, then start reading about security there. It is a simple read for the home user. If you need more, Steve Gibson also has forums that deal with just about any computer security issue you can think of.