YIPPEEE..... FTC takes out a pop-up advertising company!

Thursday, November 6, 2003 by goodmorphing | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk

http://www.msnbc.com/news/990075.asp?0cv=CB10

“POP-UP ADVERTISING is a fact of life,” said Howard Beales, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “But one company has taken pop-ups beyond annoyance.”
16 Reply 0 Referrals
bakerstreet
Reply #1 Thursday, November 6, 2003 4:13 PM
Hard to believe anyone leaves the Windows Messenger service running any more. Unless it is behind a firewall that blocks messages from the Net you are just asking for abuse. Porn sites were using it to advertise at one time, if I recall. The next thing the FTC should address are cascading pop-ups, especially the windowless pop-unders that just sit there and make more popups. I really hate the ones with sound now, too.

Has anyone had their IE start paged changed for them lately? A pop-up ad on a mainstream site was able to change mine, even with security settings that shouldn't have allowed it. I made a page locally with an old script I had and couldn't get it to impose the change, so there must be a new way of doing it.


[Message Edited]

Apocalypse_67
Reply #2 Thursday, November 6, 2003 4:14 PM
It's about damm time

EventHorizon
Reply #3 Thursday, November 6, 2003 4:39 PM
Has anyone had their IE start paged changed for them lately? A pop-up ad on a mainstream site was able to change mine


Happened to me too, but I dont recall having any pop-ups, just a visit to the site.

MadIce
Reply #4 Thursday, November 6, 2003 4:56 PM
Those flash ads in IE of Volvo and Ford are driving me nuts too. The result is that I don't visit these sites anymore. AIM has movie leaders with sound as ads, so I disabled AIM too. IMHO all these ads are doing the opposite of what sites want. They want to generate money, but it will just drive users away. I am not willing to spend extra money on every site that I visit, just to turn off the ads.

digital_k
Reply #5 Thursday, November 6, 2003 10:19 PM
I would have to say what pop ups? I have been using Firebird and Opera for so long, I think pop ups are thing of the past. But I am glad to see something being done. Now if they would just go after those email spammers and slap them all very hard...........

bakerstreet
Reply #6 Friday, November 7, 2003 2:01 AM
digital_k: Your browser flavor wouldn't affect the popups in question. These were made via the Windows Messenger service that runs in NT/2k/( XP? )
[Message Edited]

XX
Reply #7 Friday, November 7, 2003 2:33 AM
Yep. XP too. I killed my Windows Messager service. Those popups was so annoying, yanking me out of game, crashing game too.

One time i got so many popups that I just gave up and rebooted to get rid of it. Soon after, I found a way to kill it.

ama02
Reply #8 Friday, November 7, 2003 3:42 AM
Glad I read the article...I checked my Messenger service and it was set to automatic. I've turned it off now. I agree with digital_k, they really need to go after the email spammers as well. >


[Message Edited]

RatMan
Reply #9 Friday, November 7, 2003 9:22 AM
XP Service Pack 2 will disable WMS by default (which is a good thing!)



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Stockholm Syndrome
Reply #10 Friday, November 7, 2003 2:05 PM
Has anyone had their IE start paged changed for them lately? A pop-up ad on a mainstream site was able to change mine, even with security settings that shouldn't have allowed it.



Hmmm I wonder how this is being done now. >
I have settings to prevent this to, wonder if they're no longer going to work.
Hey is there any way you'd post the page, I'd like to to test/take a look? Or if you could email it to [email protected] ?

bakerstreet
Reply #11 Friday, November 7, 2003 2:30 PM
stockholm syndrome: Yup, it was actually weather_com. They normally have a popup, but on that particular visit the popup spawned about 4 others, and one of the subsequent ones changed my start page. I remember because I had the kill IE to stop the spawning and when I reopened it was the same as one of the popups I had seen.

Hasn't done it since. I intended to cruise the javascript sleaze sites to see if I could find out how it worked, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Green Armani
Reply #12 Friday, November 7, 2003 2:36 PM
Not sure if this will help anyone but over at DA they had an add for a program called SpyHunter which you can download for free and it runs a search in your computer memory/files/cookies/registry. It proportedly seeks out and finds spyware, adware, and keyloogers from your system and for a nominal fee ($29 for the full version) will remove them from your computer. I was shocked to find over 25 spyware strings in my registry and hidden files on my computer related to those above. My cookies had some too which didn't really surprise me.

It seems to work pretty good as I have set it to scan my computer every two days and it keeps finding this crap! It groups them and then will remove them for you.

Here's the link http://www.enigmasoftwaregroup.com/

I'll admit though that I now get a pop-up every now and again when I'm on the interent which tout's similiar programs which I never used to get before I got the Spy Hunter program...hmmm

kona0197
Reply #13 Friday, November 7, 2003 5:43 PM
Ever since I got the google toolbar I haven't had a single popup at all. And the google toolbar is free and puts the power of google at your fingertips.

Green Armani: Ad aware works a bit better and is completely free.

Ingui
Reply #14 Friday, November 7, 2003 6:35 PM
The ads hawked $30 software that promised only to stop future pop-ups from the company.

Green Armani
Reply #15 Friday, November 7, 2003 6:48 PM
now you tell me!!!!! Yeah....I thought I would try it out, but free is better

digital_k
Reply #16 Friday, November 7, 2003 9:06 PM


Oh I do feel dumb...lol...I have always disabled the messenger service which each computer I've bought the last couple years anyway....I was having a "blonde" moment I guess..

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