[PCWorks] A tip for stopping annoying harassing "slide-ups" (a kind of pop-up) immune to pop-up blockers
- From: "Clint Hamilton-PCWorks Admin" <PCWorks@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "PCWorks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <pcworks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:49:49 -0600
Most of the pop-up blockers we use won't stop many kinds of
them. If you've gotten as fed up as I have with them, there's
a couple of things you can do to wipe them out, site-by-site.
I was getting infuriated with a particular "slide-ups" at some
sites I frequent. As the name implies, they slide up in some
sort of a slower animated form onto the webpage rather than a
pop-up in a separate window, (this is why the pop-up blockers
won't work on them), and always, as all of them, with some
totally useless BS on them like "Hi, my name is [....] and I'm
looking for a friend", from all those kinds of "cyber-terrorism"
dating sites for example. (I fail to see why anyone with an
otherwise legit website would want to contaminate their site
with this kind of garbage).
This is on IE, I'm not sure how to do this in FireFox. The
first thing you can do is put the domain of the offending
pop-up/slide-up in the Restricted Sites Zone. For those of you
that don't know, as the name also implies with this it's a more
restrictive zone than the default "Internet Zone" where many
things are not allowed like various downloads, Cookies,
redirects, scripts, etc. You should use these types of formats:
BadDomain.com
www.BadDomain.com
*.BadDomain.com
The *. should be inclusive of the www version since that's a
wildcard, so it may tell you it's already listed in the zone, so
add the www version before the wildcard version. The reason
for the wildcard is that protects against ads.BadDomain.com,
ad.BadDomain.com, banners.BadDomain.com, etc. If you
make an error, it will tell you the correct formats it accepts.
The other thing that works even better is to put the domain
in your "hosts" file. (I don't know if FireFox uses the same
file or not). You can search your HD for it, or it should be
at the path "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc". This is
a read-only file, so you have to right click it, Properties,
then uncheck "Read Only" > Apply > Ok. Then open it in
Notepad. The domains listed in the file are in alphabetical
order, so you have to search through it for the right spot.
Note the locations of the www versions of the domains in
the file, then do the same in the right spot with your
offending domain. Then close out of the file saving it,
and BE SURE to set it back to read-only!
For those that don't know, the "hosts" file controls the
websites visited on the host PC by not allowing access to
them. By doing this, it also totally blocks anything that could
come from the website, including bogus IM's and these
kinds of annoying pop-ups & slide-ups.
If anyone is not using a hosts file, or it's blank (and if so it
means you're not using SpyBot which is bad), the format is
like this:
127.0.0.1 www.BadDomain.com
127.0.0.1 BadDomain.com
After adding numerous domains to my hosts file, I'm no
longer bothered by these nuisances.
To find the offending domain, if the whole thing is clickable
just right click the slide-up/pop-up and "Copy shortcut"
then paste it somewhere and you can see the domain.
If the whole thing is not clickable, then just do this with
a link in it. If you still can't find the domain, if "Copy
shortcut" is grayed out or not there, then you'll have to
click it. Just be sure to immediately click "Stop" to
stop the page from loading, and you can get the domain
URL from the address bar. (You don't want to give them
any traffic or risk getting malware from their site on your
PC).
Like I mentioned above, SpyBot does a great job of
modifying your hosts file. It adds many thousands of
nefarious domains (about 4500+ so far) that protects
your PC from anything from these domains. But it does
indeed leave many out that should be added. If anyone
wants to use mine, or see it to be sure your syntax or
format is correct for anything you want to add, I've
uploaded it and I'll leave it there for a few days.
There's almost 10,000 lines in mine.
http://www.orpheuscomputing.com/computers/hosts.zip
-Clint
God Bless
Clint Hamilton, Owner
http://www.OrpheusComputing.com
http://www.ComputersCustomBuilt.com
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- » [PCWorks] A tip for stopping annoying harassing "slide-ups" (a kind of pop-up) immune to pop-up blockers - Clint Hamilton-PCWorks Admin
