v1.0.1 Firefox and the pop up blocker doesn't work worth a darn. Box is checked to be active.

I installed this 3 days ago along with Thurnderbird to replace the Mozilla Suite I was using. The blocker in Mozilla is amazing but this one is horrid.

Anyone else with the same problem or solution? Other than this I have no complaints, in fact I really like it but this behavior will not do.

As always - thanks

It had been working just fine for me -- but I believe a new, more insidious type of popup has popped up (er ... sorry about that) in the past month or two. I began noticing this, and then the comic strip User Friendly made reference to it a couple of weeks back.

I use firefox 1.01 and the popup blocker is great!.
I did have to goto
options > web features
and check
block popup windows.

I also am using ver 1.0.1. and don't have any problems. I have seen some sites that "pop up" whole new browser windows...fortunately I don't visit them often enough to be a problem. Maybe a program reload may help.

Using FF 1.01 and I too have noticed ads for Vonage actually popping under. When I close a window there is that Vonage ad. It can be seen at certain sites like
drudgereport.com.

I think I have to agree.
youneverknow

I'm also using FF 1.0.1 and never had any problems with pop-ups or pop-unders. I Also tried drudgereport.com but nothing happened.

PS - youneverknow, that sig of yours is pretty nice

Can the plugin be developed to avoid all websites that use pop-up banners?
this way website developers will be forced to stop adding pop-ups.

Better still, can it allow the pop-up to appear but instead replace the content with a picture of something you like, like a family photo, favourite pet, the new girl, you get the idea.

Sorry to butt in. I'll get back to my lunch, and the sun is shining

AndyP

Same here...the last week or so Vonage ads popping under.

I use a modified hosts file on my machines to prevent ads and popup/popunders in addition to the popup blocker built into FF.

The one I use is from http://www.hosts-file.net/downloads.html

This hosts file will cause problems accessing some sites but when that happens I just rename my hosts file something else temporarily and then rename it back to turn the protection back on.

I just tried drudgereport.com with Firefox 1.0.1 and pop under showed up.
I´ll just keep relying on Norton Antispam in future.

Thanks for all the input. It's a lot morte than the Vonage ad too. Still it strikes me odd that i get these ads with Firefox and never with Mozilla on the same machine and yes, "block popup windows" is checked.

I will keep plodding. Reinstall I guess and then try the hosts(.txt) file idea.

Thanks

If you go the "hosts" route and you find that it's blocking some content you don't consider to be an issue you just simply edit out the block.

What this hosts file does is set known sites for ads, popups, popunders to just request them from you own machine 127.0.0.0 and since they don't exist on your machine you never see them.

If you are using Windows 2000/XP please follow the directions in the readme.html file in the archive. It explains about turning off the DNS caching which if not done will slow down your computer. I missed that step when I first installed it and wondered why everything was so slow.

LOL
I see the popup in firefox 1.01
but not in IE 6.0.2900....

Don, do you happen to use SpywareBlaster?

It adds a lot of restricted sites to IE as well as FF.

No, just zone alarm and norton antivirus
I had IE 6 something on win98 and saw lots of popups
But using new XP and SP2,
I don't see them, just a yellow bar that says popup blocked, click for options.

Update : I updated my SpywareBlaster and at the moment I am popup free - including drudgereport.com. Let's see if it continues to behave itself

I get popups when I go to my local newspaper, snopes.com, and one or two others I frequent. But sites like Trip Advisor that I know have popups are fine.

There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to it.

I just checked
IE6 > tools > popup blocker > popup blocker settings
I have it set to medium, block most automatic popups.
The only site I have in the allowed sites
is here (TCH)

One known way of bypassing the popup stoppers is to use Java (not javascript) to open the new window. I think they will start to abuse plugins such as java to start making their ads appear.

Here's something I found on a website today that may help with some of the popups on Firefox...

Interesting - I'll certainly try it because I'm still getting those stupid poppers.

that so called exploit doesn't make sense to me. Yes some downloads open a new window but Firefox only opens that window if you actually click a link. Automatically created windows get stopped.

Thanks TCH Jim on that extention. "Disable Targets for Downloads" Since installing it I have not had any pop unders using FireFox....(knocking on wood )
youneverknow

Update: Today I found that the pop unders have returned....Boooooo
youneverknow

First time I noticed the problem was when visiting a Tripod site. Some newspapers and disc.server forums.

It blocks most pop-ups, but the ones that sneak through are getting more numerous.

Can anybody supply any exact links to sites where the pop ups are getting through? I'd like to have a look when I get home in 12 hours or so.

I was gonna ask same thing as Carbonize.
But please make them non-active if possible since its just links for us to try.

ht*p://www.pantagraph.com
ht*p://www.snopes.com (click on What's New if you don't get one
ht*p://www.3fatchicks.com/food/

Good examples...If you watch the screen you will see a flash of the pop under going through and sure enough a pop under appears. I checked out the forums at Firefox and it seems like it could be a java type execution. I tried a few suggestions from the forum members but nothing seems to work all the time.
I even tried downloading "Ad Muncher" and it did nothing but screw up FF so I uninstalled it. Its weird how now Microsoft has found a way to stop this and it is now being exploited in FireFox....Bummer
youneverknow

Sorry, tried all three of those sites and clicked on a lot of links to get one. Nope, nada, not one pop-up or pop-under.

Been reading the code on pantagraph.com. What is in the pop under you see in firefox? I'm at work so stuck with IE5.5. The code just uses window.open so should be blocked.

Same result as Bruce. Visited all three sites, clicked around and not even one pop-up or pop-under appeared.

I really think this has to do with settings...

I got -

z1.adserver.com
patientsactionnetwork.org
z1.adserver.com (again)

I don't see how it can be settings.... there's only one right?

Do you want to stop them. Edit your Hosts file. On Win 2K and XP it's in the Windows --> System32 --> drivers --> etc folder. Open it with Notepad and enter the following lines.

127.0.0.1 z1.adserver.com
127.0.0.1 patientsactionnetwork.org

Now go back and try again. You shouldn't see them. What you have done by editing the Hosts file is tell it to look at your machine for those sites. Since they don't exist they don't pop-up/under.

Not strictly true. Unless the code used to create the pop ups/unders is coming from them servers all that this will do is make the pop ups/unders display a server not found message in the pop up/under window.

Oddly enough those particular ads have not appeared a 2nd or 3rd time revisiting the same sites and I haven't changed anything.

I will however drop those 2 items into the hosts file. Thanks.

They use a cookie to track if you have seen the advert or not and only show it you once every 24 hours.

But there still must be a reason why some of us are seeing them and others aren't. If you know of another general setting besides just turning on the popup blocker, please let us know.

I've looked at the code at the snopes.com web site. The javascript is some nasty code (but I'll spare everyone the gory details).

The script on the page loads and runs a second javascript from media dot fastclick dot net. I was able to capture a copy of that second javascript's code to examine for myself.

To get around Firefox's popup blocker, the second script writes an 'embed' tag into the page that loads a Flash file (from cdn dot fastclick dot net). The Flash file contains code in it to open the pop-under window. Firefox's popup blocker does not stop this window from opening, because the popup blocker is not looking at windows opened from Firefox plugins such as the Flash plugin.

A preference was added to Firefox to control windows opened by plugins, but this preference is not visible by default. To create this preference in Firefox, go to the "about:config" page (enter about:config in the address bar).

Right click in the window where the values are listed and select "New", then "Integer".

Enter "privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins" for the preference name (without the quotes), then click "OK".

Enter "2" for the preference value, then click "OK".

The new preference should take effect immediately - it should not be necessary to restart your browser before the preference will work.

The privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins preference can take one of four values:

0 = Allow Popups From Plugins
1 = Limit Popup Windows From Plugins (to dom.popup_maximum, even with popup blocker disabled)
2 = Block Popups From Plugins
3 = Block All Popups From Plugins (including white listed sites)

A good site to test the preference on after creating it is liquidgeneration dot com.

If you use the Adblock plugin for Firefox, it looks like it would be a good idea to block fastclick dot net. Users who never see pop-under windows may have ad-blocking software that is blocking fastclick dot net and other advertising domains that may be hosting this code, may not have the Flash plugin installed, may have javascript disabled, etc.

Links:
- Bugzilla bug 176079 - "popup blocking does not stop Flash from opening windows"
- Slashdot article: "The Return Of The Pop-Up Ad"

Hope this helps...

You have hit the nail right on the head, David.

I have always used the "Flash click to view" plugin (highly recommended, pages load faster, no bandwidth wasted on unwanted flash movies... ) and those of use who also don't see the pop-up/under windows have some similar plugin installed. Or even that preference already set, who knows. One thing I was certain of: it had to be something done by the users, not a problem with Firefox because it doesn't have a will of it's own to pick who it will bother with pop-ups

Someone has already mentioned it, but if you install adblock and use the wildcard feature it will help, also you can use cookie manager to block cookies and some sites will not respond if cookies are blocked. For me it boils down to using whatever tools are available. The HOSTS file someone mentioned is pretty restrictive so you'll find yourself editting that to your tastes, but that also helps. Popup block, cookie block, adblock, and HOSTS file have almost completely eliminated popups for me.

Since I am the one that mentioned it I will say that you are correct. However I have a batch file on my desktop that I can click to rename the HOSTS file so that I can see a particular site and then run a batch file to rename it back. This way I don't have to edit the HOSTS file.

Blea - I put half a dozen urls in my host file last night and today they are back as blank pop-ups.

Just stupid little empty windows..........

I may go back to mozilla suite, even though further developement is kaput.

Sorry, Ty.

In additon to my HOSTS file being altered to prevent ad servers from serving images I also use adaware, spybot search & destroy and spyware blaster.

I am behind a router too. Thankfully something is blocking these windows from appearing.

Also, I do not allow cookies except from the originating site and keep cookies only for the current browser session.

For sites that I want to store cookies I add them manually as exceptions.

Ah.so it goes. Adaware, spybot and blaster all come up clean, I'm behind a router as well.

There are plenty of other things more worth worrying about for sure.

Have you tried TCH-David's suggestion above?

Even before adding the Hosts file Bruce mentioned, I eliminated most popups. The final help was SpywareBlaster as recommended earlier.

I also have the following extensions:
WeatherFox - irrelevant
Search Keys - irrelevant
Image Zoom - irrelevant
User Agent Switcher - irrelevant ?
Adblock - relevant
Disable Targets for Downloads - relevant

I also have not changed any of the about:config settings so it's not that helping me. Under options I have everything checked except "for the originating site only".

Hope it helps some. It's nice to not have all that junk when you power-close firefox at work to keep the boss from seeing you surf.

Ah, the revelation that it was flash related makes sense. I've currently got java disabled (and have for some time), but for the first time in a long time flash is enabled.

Yep, makes perfect sense.

oops - I missed David's post, thanks. I did as he suggested and then visited liquidgeneration dot com and I got the site but no popups. This is good? Of course it is, anything that helps to keep the little monsters out is good

A new version of the modified hosts file that Bruce mentions above (and that I too use now) have been released today.