I run a small web site and I am extremely interested on how I can
block pop up ads when customers visit my site without having the
customer load anything on thier computer. Please help. May be more
money available with a valid solution.

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Request for Question Clarification by scriptor-ga on 29 Dec 2002 16:21 PST

Dear bic123,

To work on finding an answer, it is absolutely necessary that you
provide some additional information:
What kind of webspace do you use for storing your website? Is it
fee-based or cost-free? What is the name of your webspace provider?
Also, it might prove helpful if you could give us the address of the
website.

Best regards,
Scriptor

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Request for Question Clarification by tisme-ga on 29 Dec 2002 16:26 PST

Hello bic123,

Are these popups coming from your website? If this is the case, the
only thing you can really do is find a different server to host your
website on.

If you are talking about third party applications launching pop-ups
when people visit your website (spyware and/or adware) we could write
up instructions for your visitors to get rid of the third party
software causing this.

tisme-ga

bic123-ga,

There are a number of ways to interpret your question.  I will try to
answer all the possible permutations.

First:  If the pop-up ads are coming from a free host (Tripod,
Angelfire, Geocities, etc), depending on the method implemented, it is
unlikely you will be able to avoid these advertisements from being
displayed to the end user without them installing additional software.
 That is to say, if your web page is hosted on one of these services,
then a) you will most likely be violating their terms of service and
b) it may be impossible to remove the ads depending on their method of
implementing.  As slicksingh2k-ga mentions,
http://www.cexx.org/diepop.htm will provide you information on
eliminating popups using these services (but is not an exhaustive
source for the reasons previously mentioned).  Please see
recommendations at end of answer.

Second:  If you are trying to allow users to go to your site and have
popup ads blocked for all subsequent sites, this is not possible
without the user installing additional software.  Browser settings
usually require that they agree to this installation, or download the
software seperately and install it.  Alternatively, if you are trying
to clean the user's machine of spyware, there is no automatic method.

Third:  Depending on the choice of browser, these advertisements may
be automatically blocked based on user settings.

If you are using one of the free services, I would like to mention as
other researchers already have that there are a number of commercial
website hosting services that do not include popup advertisement
services.  In addition, the company that provides your Internet
service MAY provide free, non-popup-ad web space.  Contact them for
details.

For more information on blocking forms of popup advertisements see:

http://jenett.org/asap/ - Popup Clearinghouse

http://technoerotica.net/mylog/optouts.html - TE Optout Links for many
popup advertisement services

http://investor.cnet.com/investor/news/newsitem/0-9900-1028-6870262-0.html
- Panicware Pop-up Stopper

http://feh.net/adblock/adblock.shtml - Ad blocking methods for many
popular systems

http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ - List of ad servers

http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Node/1533/popup.html -
Eliminating Geocities Popups

Good luck in your quest.

Thanks,
arimathea-ga
Google Answers Researcher

You're paying $50 to get this answer and you're paying nothing for the
webspace.  Do you realize you can get a small commercial webspace
(without any pop up ads) running for only a few dollars a month?

In any case, here is http://www.adshield.org/
It's pretty good and it's free.

You may find that displaying pop-up ads are included in the Terms of
Service you have agreed on with your provider, in which case trying to
block them (even if possible) could put you in breach of contract.

Just have them use netscape 7.01 or Mozilla and under options and then
advance uncheck the option for "Open unrequested scripts". works like
wonders!

Here's your answer. But before I tell you this, Subverting a Free
Webspace Provider's popups or other ads may be against the TOS, and as
such, they reserve the right to shut your site down or whatever.

All credit and more incentful information goes towards
http://www.cexx.org/diepop.htm

That website is all you need and I believe it is the information
you're looking for. It covers pretty much all of the freeservers and
their ads.

I should be given the money.