Stopping Pop Ups

"I'm so sick of the pop ups on my computer,'" she complained. "Some days, I dread turning it on at all." Her complaint came as no surprise. Unprotected PCs are pop up magnets ... whether they're popping from honest websites in search of additional revenues or spawned by unscrupulous spyware operators out to scam the last possible buck. Annoying as pop ups are, they're easily prevented ...

One of the best side benefits of my simple anti spyware routine is to keep all (not just some) pop ups off my PC. By shutting down the avenues for those nefarious ne'er-do-wells, I've shut down all the pops.

Much of my routine is based on avoiding Microsoft Internet Explorer. But I realize that some folks aren't ready to switch to a more resilient browser. That's where the pop up blockers come into play.

Prior to ditching MSIE this past summer, I spent a good bit of time fiddling around with pop up blockers. There are lots of companies I wouldn't trust these days. Some of these pop up blockers bear close scrutiny.

While I found a slew of choices for stopping pop ups, I tried Google's Toolbar first, before taking STOPzilla for an extended drive.

Google's famous "do no evil" policy makes me all warm and fuzzy. (How could you not trust a company that takes all of its employees to Lake Tahoe for a big party?)

There's no better price for a pop up-blocking toolbar than free. The Google toolbar was cool ... but I wanted more protection.

That's when I checked into STOPzilla.

STOPzilla performed well for me, but the deeper that I got into the topic, the more I realized that it was the browser that formed the crux of the problem. I got to the end of the free trial period and realized that I needed to ditch MSIE to take my effort to the next level. Once I battened all the hatches in MSIE and threw away the key, all of the popups went away. With the popups gone, I wasn't compelled to purchase STOPzilla.

If I was still running MSIE, it would be a different story ...