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HELP! My blog has popups!

By: Qwaider

On:Tuesday, May 19, 2009 8:45:55 AM
In:Blogging Tips
Viewed: (13077) times

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Rated 4.7/5 stars (118 votes cast) Thanks for your vote!

[UPDATED]

I received this cry for help from a fellow blogger (who will remain anonymous) and upon investigating the cause, it turns out, they have installed a little flash control that looks really cool, but has a major problem. It comes Free, with POPUPS!

Not the simple kind of popups, but those that are really hard to detect. Like the one I outlined here

The new culprit appears to be www.widgeo.net, another one had http://goooogleadsence.biz/, which was wreaking havoc on another website in the Arab sphere. A third had rankwidget.com. (Links broken deliberately)

Now, here's how these evil dudes work

I'm not going to explain the social part behind these sites. But rather how they skip under people's radar.

Some will wait until you "click" somewhere on the page (Utilizing "OnClick" callback) to launch a popup. It's sickening. But sometimes they're even more clever. They would show a popup ever 7th click. Or every 8th Mouse Scroll up. Or after 2 days from the last time you visited. They keep a nice cookie on your machine to know if they will show a popup or not

Because of this, it's hard to detect these since they don't happen every time. Now, here's my advice

Always be suspicious. Even if it happens ONCE. Try to find out WHY there was a popup. If you have added something recently to your blog. Try to investigate it. If you can't, drop me a line and I will take a look (you can leave me a whisper if you're not sure, and I'll help you investigate)

Gadgets, widgets and embedded content like counters, videos, music ...etc. are nice and provide many services. It's unfortunate that some people are taking advantage of these to finance their services by taking advantage of your blog or site to do so. Don't allow them. Be smart about it. Let me know if I can help you do it

Understand this, there is absolutely no legitimate reason why anything you add to your site to hijack your visitors like that. Even if it was 1 in 1000. Not a single reputable or legitimate business would do this, so don't allow it to happen on your blog either.

Still wondering if your blog has popups? Try this...

Turn off cookies (In IE, just go to "Tools, Internet options, Privacy" and then slide that thing to the top) Note this so that you can return it to normal when your done.
Go to the page you suspect has unwanted, illusive, pop-ups
Check to see if you get them
Return your privacy settings to normal

There are no guarantees that this would work all the time, but it sure raises your chance of capturing the evil popup in action

Memories....

#1
Mab3oos
Said
On: 5/19/2009 10:36:43 AM
SpamScore=[-0.91]

Not just pop-ups. My browser would actually crash every time I visited her blog. I hope it's fixed now. I wanted to tell her to do something about it. but, I was never able to stay on the blog long enough.

#2
mohammad
Said
On: 5/19/2009 10:45:18 AM
SpamScore=[0.99]

good morning,
for me, I use some add-ons for firefox like:
Noscript to disable javascripts, ghostery to know the sites 'watching' you, and adblock plus, they are very helpful

#3
KJ
Said
On: 5/19/2009 11:18:33 AM
SpamScore=[0.18]

The web is a crime metropolis

#5
Qwaider
Said
On: 5/19/2009 5:17:08 PM
SpamScore=[-41.36]

Garfan
That could be a side effect of your browser actually trying very hard to protect you. But yeah. I hope so too

Mohammad
Add-ons are great, and they're very helpful. However, javascript is something that people just can't live without. It's an essential part of the web experience. Without it, you're really missing out on some really great gadgets, widget and page additions.
What is important is for every webmaster (and blog owner) to know what they're hosting on their blog. What's leeching with their pages.

KJ
Indeed :)

Whisperer
I'll reply to you privately

#6
mohammad
Said
On: 5/19/2009 5:44:36 PM
SpamScore=[0.97]

hi again,
after i know that the website is safe and can be trusted i enable javascript on it,
i agree with that but the visitor also has to keep aware while surfing,

#7
Qwaider
Said
On: 5/19/2009 6:29:02 PM
SpamScore=[-40.31]

You're right, users should keep their guard at all times. The problem that I describe here is about Good website owners and good bloggers, falling victim to these rogue add-ons that take advantage of people trusting the user (like a good friend of yours) to spread their junk