AKICILJ: Getting away from toxic websites

[carbonel]

First of all, I'm still using Internet Explorer. I've tried Firefox and Opera, and I just don't like them as well. So anyone who's going to advise me to fix my problems by switching browsers, please ignore this, KTHXBYE. I'm also using McAfee Total Protection, which is kind of cranky, but warns me about some evil websites when I'm googling.

So here's the problem. There's one site that I use that (I assume) gets its revenue from advertising. It opens up a popunder window every time I go there. I can live with that most of the time, but every so often it opens up a site that, when I try to close it, pops up a dialog window that asks something like "Do you REALLY want to navigate away from here? You shouldn't, because this is Teh Awesum!" And I have the choice of OK or Cancel, and I don't want to click either of those, because I don't trust them. Clicking on the red X in the upper-right corner just brings up the same dialog box again. The site also tends to open up to full-screen size, when it started out much smaller. The only solution I've found is the terminal one -- use Windows' Task Manager to close down IE. Which is a pain because it closes all my IE windows, and I can't use the recovery feature afterwards because it would bring back the one site I don't want along with everything else.

I use a popup blocker, but it doesn't stop most popunders. I'm on Windows XP.

Help?

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

If it's really just one site -- find the DNS name for the site and alias that to 127.0.0.1 in your lmhosts file.

[carbonel]

I think you're misunderstanding which "really just one site" I mean. The site I go to is just one site. That site has useful content, which is why I go there. The toxic popunder generated from said site for ad revenue is not unique. It's a category of thing.

And I don't get those most of the time, or I would have squawked a lot sooner. Most of the time it's Netflix ads or something similarly benign.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I had the impression it was a small minority of popunders that were a problem. Those are the ones you need to block, somehow.

[brooksmoses]

My normal advice for this would be to disable Javascript, but unfortunately the directions I can find for doing that in IE indicate that the setting only takes effect when you restart the browser, so that's no help if you need to do that in order to close the browser! This may be different in IE9, though.

Also, it's a messy workaround, but you could close down IE with Task Manager, disable Javascript, restart it with the recovery feature (and, since Javascript is disabled, the popunder will be "dead" and easily closed), close the offending sites, close down IE again, re-enable Javascript, and restart it with recovery a second time to get back to where you were with the other sites and with Javascript enabled.

Alternately, I don't know if that McAfee product has the ability for you to specifically add sites to its block list, but if it does, you could figure out what the URL of the popunder windows is, and block that. (It is almost certainly not the same site as the page it come from, so you should be able to block one without the other.)

[aedifica]

What happens if you right-click on the popunder's entry in the task bar and choose "close" there?

[carbonel]

I don't think there is a task bar. Most popunders don't have them -- just the web content and the blue (on my computer, at least) Windows edge.

[aedifica]

Oh. The task bar, or at least what I mean when I say task bar, is the bar that has a listing for every open program--it's part of XP, not part of the popunder. By default it's along the bottom edge of the screen, though it can be moved to a different edge. I think it may be the same thing you mean by "blue Windows edge".

[carbonel]

Oh, I see what you mean. I'm dubious, but it's worth a try next time. (I suspect it'll either not work or close all my IE windows.)

[aedifica]

It depends on whether the popunder gets its own entry in the taskbar. It should, but its creators may have written it not to. But at worst, it's a quicker way of accomplishing your current solution (close IE).

[guppiecat]

I am far more skilled in the browsers that you do not want to consider... so all I can say is to try http://simple-adblock.com/downloadpage/ and https://adblockie.codeplex.com/ . They might help.

You could also use dd_b's suggestion if you can find out which ad site the other site is referencing. They usually refer to a common site like adserver.* or *doubleclick* that can be blocked with a hosts entry.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I use my preferred browser for all browsing except one site I have a lot of bookmarks for I use a different browser, and for my most toxic destination, I have a separate browser just and only for it. So, not suggesting that you give up your preferred browser, but can you consider a separate browser with different securoty setup for this one site?

K.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

That's a clever idea. Beth, can you run a separate instance of IE?

B

[carbonel]

There's no such thing as a separate instance of IE, best I can tell, but I could use Firefox just for this one site. Thanks, K, for the suggestion.

(I already use Firefox for a couple of business-related purposes; one of the online sites I need doesn't work under IE.)

[idea-fairy.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of guessing because I'm not familiar with IE, but when an evil site shows up can you close all the other open windows individually so they later show up in the History or Recently Viewed or whatever and can be easily re-opened without resorting to Recovery? Then when the evil site is the only one still open, zap it with the Task Manager?

Then you can re-open whichever of the non-evil sites you want when you want them.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I used to use the Task Manager to quit out of neverending multiplying popups.