The commenter has picked up a parasite known as adware or spyware. He needs to download Ad-aware 6.0 from LAVASOFT: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/. It's free and a piece of software every Internet user should have.

I run adaware and spysweeper and your site gives me popups.

Doesn't make any sense. I don't get any pop-ups with this site. Never have. Perhaps Bill should contact the blogads people.

That's rich. I read this on the front page, and open up the article to read the comments, and I got a pop up/under ad. I'm using Mozilla, and I have it set to not open pop ups/unders, and just this week I've started seeing sites getting around that, starting with my home town newspaper. Now I have new windows open as tabs in Mozilla, so it opened as a new tab, hence I don't know if it was a up or under pop up. The link is http://ads.addynamix.com/creative/2-2127261-13i?, for what it's worth.

No Popups/unders showing up for me, and none detected (thus blocked) by either PopupCop, or the popup blocker in SlimBrowser.

I'm getting a pop-up blocked noise from my pop-up blcoker when I come to the front page or return from visiting an outside link...

And I run both adaware and spybot.

I'm getting pop-under ads from your page, too, Bill. I would be annoyed except that it's clear by this blog entry that you didn't put them there on purpose. Hope you're able to identify and eliminate the source soon.

Often, when I visit this site, my Google tool bar blocks a pop-up.

It's some sort of spyware. My Dad's PC had it this past weekend. Those are the exact same ads we saw on his box.

Spybot didn't take care of it, but the newest version of Adaware did. To the person that said they ran Adaware, make sure you are updated to the newest version, and then make sure you do a FULL scan of every drive on the box. It may takes hours.

Yep, it's spyware. I ran AdAware and didn't get it, then UPDATED AdAware, ran it again, and got it.

Anyone having this problem, go get the free version of AdAware at lavasoftusa.com. Install it, then before you run it, do "check for updates" so it can go get the latest reference file. Then run your scan and you should be fine.

Still- that leaves us with the question: how did we get spyware that triggers a popup when we hit Bill's site? I haven't had a popup problem elsewhere, so it seems this spyware is somehow identifying with Bill's site. Odd.

I don't think Bill's site is doing anything in particular to trigger it. My Dad has never been to Bill's site, but he is the kind of person that would click on pop ads from other sites and inadvertently install spyware. It may key off of your bookmarks, cause he was seeing it on CNN's homepage.

Paul- I'm not seeing these ads anywhere else, and I don't have Bill's site bookmarked- I type the URL in manually. I do think there's something on Bill's site triggering it, probably some third party code integrated into the site. My prime suspect: if not BlogAds, then that Bravenet hit counter, although I don't have anything solid to base that on. It's just a hunch.

Many sites have blogads and hundreds of blogs use the Bravenet counter. I doubt it's those. Pop-ups may be tied to the popularity of a site, and mine has been getting a lot more traffic lately. Maybe it's crossed a threshold where the pop-up publishers think there's enough traffic here to warrant it.

I run adaware regulary on both my home and work PCs, and the Google toolbar pop-up blocker on my browser at home and at work and don't get pop-ups or pop-unders when I visit billhobbs.com. The pop-up blocker doesn't even trigger the alert for blocking any.

However, when I leave another site to go to billhobbs.com, by typing the URL in, I sometimes get the "alert" that shows one has been blocked. I think the fault may lie in the sites I (and others) are LEAVING when they come here - those sites may be serving up the pop-ups and pop-unders.

No popups for me with either Mozilla 1.6 or Opera 7.51. Opera - however both report javascript problems:
Error: getCookie is not defined
Source File: http://billhobbs.com/hobbsonline/004021.html#comments
Line: 356

possibly related?

Sounds ominous. Except I don't know what it means or how to fix it.

Good evening. I thought I would follow-up here.

I think the chances of adware are low; as I mentioned at the post on Pop-Up Mocker, I've seen the pop-up ads from two different computers, including one in a highly secure environment where the user cannot install software at all. If it is adware, it's very selective adware; I've seen it only on the two blogs I mentioned, yours and Balloon Juice.

I implied, or tried to, that I suspected it came from an external script called by your template, and when I looked at your page source, I saw the BlogAd script first, which is why I named it.

I would guess it's the free BraveNet counter. Both you and Balloon Juice use the free counter, so it's another external script you share. Also, if you visit the knowledge base for the counter, you can find this insight:

What added features will I receive if I upgrade to Counter/Site Stats Professional?
The Professional Counter/Site Stats service provides these features:



- All banner and popup ads will be removed from your service.

- Your service limit increases to allow you to create 25 counters.

- Ability to turn your Counters invisible.

- Private Statistics allow you to set a password on your statistics page.

- *New* You can now see statistics for up to 12 months!

That's my additional two cents worth.

Ah, that's interesting. Well, then, folks will just have to install pop-up blockers - they're available free from Google and others - 'cause I don't need to upgrade Bravenet, but I like having it.

And Brian thanks you for it; he gets more fodder for Pop-Up Mocker. There's a positive for everyone who goes looking.

hln

Hello I was searching for pop ups from Bravenet and I found your site..

YES SPREAD THE WORD - BRAVENET COUNTERS CAUSE POP UPS, Heres a reply from Bravenet I got tonite about the opo ups/unders on my dot coms (using bravenet counters.

From Bravenet 7.8.04:

Dear Big AL (NAME EDITED),

Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback. In order to keep the services free we have had to implement both banner advertising, as well as pop-up advertising. However, the pop-ups will only appear once every four hours. If you find the popups are appearing more than that, then your browser is not accepting our cookies. Please enable cookies in your browser and this should correct the problem. If you do not know how to do this, please consult your brower help files. Also, when navigating our services make sure to use our buttons rather than your browsers back and forward buttons so that you do not get the same popups loading more than once.

Although, we find this difficult to believe if the pop-ups do become very annoying, or obtrusive and you have to find an alternate service, we understand and are sorry to see you go.

And that I am GONE !!!

Thanks for the space Bill

Have a good eve All

Big AL in The BronX

Bravenet's not running popups on counters anymore. Backlash was too big.
I put Bravenet counters back on my pages, as their stats are really quite amazing.
No popups at all.
Bravenet's a pretty decent company, quite frankly.
- Jim

it seems they (bravenet) still employ popups. at least their "premium services" still claim that by buying in, popups will be removed.

besides, they killed all the good functionality from the free service; its really stripped down now.

i just canceled my account with them.

thanks for the space on this topic.

oh, by the way, GWB is de Debil.