ItsGeekToMe.co

Q: Please send instructions for searching your archives; otherwise, here is my question.  I am using latest version of Firefox. Have recently been experiencing pop-up ad windows even though I have disabled pop-ups. From what I understand from Firefox help, these ad are windows, not pop-up ads, and they can’t control them. Is there another way to avoid them?

– G. B.
Fort Walton Beach, Florida

A: The entire column archive (263 issues as of this writing) is available on my website, which you can reach at ItsGeekToMe.co (not .com).  To search the archives, simply enter the keywords you’d like to search for in the bar at the top of each screen, then click the magnifying glass.  You’ll get a list of every column in which your searched term appears, and you can then click an issue from the list to read it.  The site is rather austere at the moment, because the site hasn’t really seen too much use since I put it up.  If a few more people would sign up (it’s free) and start a bit of activity in the discussion threads, I’d be more likely to invest the effort to expand the site.  You can, however, search the archives without signing up.

Regarding your Firefox question, I looked through the online documentation to try and find what you were talking about when you said Firefox’s help says the ads are Windows and not pop-up ads.  I think you might have misread.  What I found was this quote: “Sometimes ads are designed to look like windows, but really aren’t.  Firefox’s pop-up blocker can’t stop these ads.”  I believe what they are saying is that sometimes advertisers create their ads in such a way as to make them look like a Microsoft Windows dialog box (the typical mechanism for pop-ups), but in reality it is just graphics that look like a dialog box.  They might contain a fake title bar, with a fake “X” button that looks like it will close the Window.  It might have what looks like “OK” and “Cancel” buttons, or “Yes” and “No” buttons, but in reality these are pictures and not the Windows components they appear to be.  Clicking anywhere inside the graphic is going to take you to the advertiser’s site.  Since these ads don’t use any pop-up mechanism, Firefox can’t stop them from fooling you.  It takes discipline and a little situational awareness for you to protect yourself from yourself.  No matter what the little window-looking thing says, you have not really won an iPad, you aren’t really the site’s 10,000^th user of the day, and nobody really wants to give you $1000 just for clicking a box.  From my perspective, any company that feels like they have to try and trick me into viewing information about whatever product or service they’re hawking is not worthy of my business anyway.  That goes for SPAM too.  I simply refuse to do business with any company that uses these questionable methods to advertise.  The more people who follow this practice, the less motivation scammers and spammers and pop-up advertisers will have to continue this practice.