ItsGeekToMe.co

Q: Recently, short audio ads will boom from my laptop. Some have been for automobiles or insurance, and don’t seem to be related to any ads on web pages I may have left open. They are so loud I can hear them rooms away. I will delete my browsing history and reboot and the problem seems to disappear for a while.

– Brenda H.
Fort Walton Beach, Florida

A: Ah, advertising! I think we all have a love/hate relationship with ads. We hate them because they’re in the way, they take up screen real estate, and they make us wait to watch videos, but we love them because the revenue they generate is the primary reason that any of what we consider to be “free” content and services still exist. These things are not really free – they are paid by advertising. You may not like this concept, but it’s really no different than how free radio and television have gotten paid-for over many decades. Unfortunately, some Internet advertisers use rather underhanded techniques that tend to tip that love/hate balance more toward the “hate” side. One example is the so-called “pop-under” ad, which opens a dialog box underneath the browser window you’re using. Later, when you minimize or close the browser you find an ad, possible multiple ads waiting to be read. Grr! Then there’s the one you’re asking about. When I’m online, I tend to have a browser with at least 4 tabs open, and more often than not, 6, 10, or even more tabs, particularly when I’m doing research. I don’t like to have to keep reloading my search results, so I right-click on links and click “Open in new tab”. This can very quickly result in a whole bunch of open tabs. All of a sudden my computer will start playing some audio extolling the virtue of a product that I didn’t click on, don’t want to know about, and am not interested in buying. Occasionally I can scroll through a tab or two and find a sidebar ad that is actually a video that auto-played. I click Stop or Pause, and the audio stops. Other times I can scroll through every open tab fruitlessly searching, the whole time listening to this audio that I don’t want.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I feel your pain, Brenda. When it happens to me, I just click the “Mute” button and completely cut off the computer’s audio. That works for the moment, but the bandwidth to stream the audio is still being used, and if I don’t remember to turn the audio back on, I miss e-mail and other notifications. So, at best that option is a clumsy patch to the problem. One thing to keep in mind is that not all items loaded by your web browser are necessarily visible on the screen. So just because you hear audio doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll see something when you look for it. Even pop-up blockers have no effect, since the audio isn’t coming from a pop-up window.

There are a couple of things I can recommend to try. The easiest is to enable filtering of ActiveX content in your browser. In Internet Explorer click on the little gear icon in the toolbar, then click Safety. In the slide-off menu, make sure “ActiveX Filtering” is checked. That should help with the ads, but you might find some other content doesn’t work, and you may end up turning the filter back off because of that. You might also want to experiment with various ad blocking software to see if any of them are able to block these audio ads. Just enter Ad Blocker into your favorite search engine. Remember though, by blocking ads, you’re choking off the source of revenue that keeps free content free, so be careful about biting the hand that feeds you! I don’t mind ads, but I do resent being deceived, or having distracting content forced on me when I’ve got better things to do on my computer. Perhaps what is really needed is a grass-roots campaign where we all get together and write to the manufacturer of products that use these annoying advertising methods and simply let them know that we will not be spending any money on their product until they choose a less intrusive method of advertising. I’m in if anyone want to lead the charge.