Been surfing the internet and have a window pop up ? Does the window contain an ad or a new page from the site you are looking at ?

Some sites use pop up windows to continue in their site. This is sometimes needed to keep some log information or JAVA script current in your computer without using a cookie.

Most of the time these pop ups are ads and very annoying. They seemed to work at first. The ads were harmless and easy to close. Then someone had the idea to continue the ads when you hit the close button (usually provided) or closed the window using the X in the upper right hand corner. That would trigger another ad and then another.

Not only very annoying but makes the whole Internet experience unpleasant.

Some companies have gone a step further. Iwon.com has found a way to load a folder on your hard drive with information to access an advertising site to create a pop up window.

You do not have to be surfing, you only need to be online, then a window pops up out of no where. Iwon.com has no knowledge of this event, however they have a way to cure it.

Just delete the folder. Well you can not delete the folder because it has some .dll files in it and they can not be deleted in windows while any online function is in use. They can be deleted in safe mode. This seems to be the only way to rid yourself of this type of pop up ad. However they will not tell you this, they only tell you to find the file and delete it, they do not want this folder deleted as they placed it there on purpose.

I guess the ultimate in computer pop ups is the FreeAccess.net areas. There are several of these sites. They give you free access to the internet, in turn they will scroll ads across the bottom the computer while you are on line. They will sometimes scroll ads when you are not online. The advertisers were paying up to $2000 a week to have these ads on your computer. I looked into that when it was first available and tried it to see if it was a good form of advertising. It removed the bottom inch or so from my computer for the ads and was very annoying. Needless to say the cost was too high and the result was very annoying.

Then a computer company gave away 10,000 computer. Unfortunately I was not able to get one. However I know someone who did. The free computer was a Compaq 500meg.

At the time a very fast and desirable computer. ON this computer an operating system based on win98 was already loaded with tons of intrusion software. (You were not able to alter any preloaded files) This computer ran ads across the bottom 100% of the time. Incredibly annoying to have these ads scrolling while trying to do word processing or interact with an online class. If you clicked on an ad and were not online, the click would find your modem, then put you online to the site you clicked to.

Is this a version of SPAM? Read my article about SPAM, you can make that judgement for yourself as SPAM has a very broad definition.

Do you want to report this type of violation? Visit our resources page to links to helpful sites.