Pop Up Advice

[don]

I'm suddenly getting very aggressive Pop Ups on practically every site and every click on a choice or link, including the 'tulip. Can't stop them. I downloaded a protection program, which scanned all my files and came up with a couple of miscreants but that hasn't slowed the Pop Ups. I increased Microsoft's filtering to high, dumped all the cookies. Now I get a warning of an unfriendly intruder but they're not stopped, only temporarily blocked. I have to manually delete each one and they come on like Zulus at Roarke's Drift. Any suggestions?

[Woodsman]

Re: Pop Up Advice

Maybe shutdown and restart in safe more and then begin the process of cache clearing and de-virusing? Irritating, but not fatal.

[Milton Kuo]

Re: Pop Up Advice

Sounds like your computer has malware on it. The best course of action is to format the hard drive and reinstall all of the applications because you never know if a malware removal program will truly eliminate all malware, some of which run silently without tipping off the user that they are installed. Barring that, try running MalwareBytes on the computer to clear out the malware. When running MalwareBytes, have it do a deep scan.

[jpatter666]

Re: Pop Up Advice

Sounds like your computer has malware on it. The best course of action is to format the hard drive and reinstall all of the applications because you never know if a malware removal program will truly eliminate all malware, some of which run silently without tipping off the user that they are installed. Barring that, try running MalwareBytes on the computer to clear out the malware. When running MalwareBytes, have it do a deep scan.

Are you running with a protection program? I use Avast which works well. There is a free version.

For Avast, start with a boot scan -- this reboots your computer and runs the scan before the OS even starts. This will catch viruses which infect the boot sector (its a good thing to run monthly)

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Pop Up Advice

Don, it does sound peculiar to your computer. I see no change in popups and I regularly run several browsers -iE, Chrome, and Safari.
I have had great success with Avast also -that boot time scan digs out things others can't fix.

Some time ago I lost an XP box to a nasty root-kit virus that even Avast could not clean up. Had to wipe the hard drive and re install everything.
That process was so frustrating I bought my iMAc.
I still have that XP box, now wiped and rebuilt, but I never connect it to the web, I only use it to run my 3D mechanical CAD software.

For what its worth, I added Apple's Time Machine external automatic backup drive to my iMac. There must be equivalent products for Windows machines.
Very slick -it runs automatically in the background, making a deep archive of complete and incremental backups like we all should but which none us every really do.
Although I have it wired as my router, it is also wireless.
My families laptops automatically back up every time they are in range.

[RebbePete]

Re: Pop Up Advice

I'm suddenly getting very aggressive Pop Ups on practically every site and every click on a choice or link, including the 'tulip. Can't stop them. I downloaded a protection program, which scanned all my files and came up with a couple of miscreants but that hasn't slowed the Pop Ups. I increased Microsoft's filtering to high, dumped all the cookies. Now I get a warning of an unfriendly intruder but they're not stopped, only temporarily blocked. I have to manually delete each one and they come on like Zulus at Roarke's Drift. Any suggestions?

I run AVG, a free anti-virus program. You can also try SpyBot for detecting and purging malware.

If you want to shell out some bucks, there's Macafee and others.

Hope it works out for you!

[sunpearl71]

Re: Pop Up Advice

I'm suddenly getting very aggressive Pop Ups on practically every site and every click on a choice or link, including the 'tulip. Can't stop them. I downloaded a protection program, which scanned all my files and came up with a couple of miscreants but that hasn't slowed the Pop Ups. I increased Microsoft's filtering to high, dumped all the cookies. Now I get a warning of an unfriendly intruder but they're not stopped, only temporarily blocked. I have to manually delete each one and they come on like Zulus at Roarke's Drift. Any suggestions?

I'm with Kaspersky (paid version) for the past 5 years, which is very good at preventing and identifying such viruses. They also offer 30-day free trial versions.

[Adeptus]

Re: Pop Up Advice

Here's my advice as a guy who works in IT for ~20 years. Whilst fixing PC's is not my day job, I do this often enough to be mostly up to date on how to fix most PC problems.This is a useful list of clean-up tasks to perform on your Windows system even if you currently don't have any problems you are aware of.

Step 1. Create Restore Point and/or Backup - If running windows 7 or 8, start off by creating a Restore Point (Control Panel/System/System Protection/"Create" button).
If you have Windows XP or earlier version, simply attach an external drive or USB stick and backup all your important files. If you have backup software already installed on your computer, perform a backup. You can also create backups in Windows 7 in "Control Panel/Backup and Restore" area. It's always a good idea to backup your system before making any significant changes to it.

Step 2. Remove all Malware - Install Trial version of Malware Bytes & do a system scan. Malware Bytes is still ranked as the #1 malware remover out there. If you have malware, this will highly likely catch it. After you are done with it you may uninstall it, keep it around for 30 days, or buy it if it saved your bacon. http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Step 3. Go to Internet Explorer, Tools/ Internet Options menu. Select the Privacy Tab. -Set the internet zone to Medium. Make sure Pop-up Blocker option has "turn on pop-up blocker" checked. Click on Advanced Tab. Click Restore Advanced Settings button.

Step 4. Install "Ad Block" (Recommended for Chrome, Safari, Opera) or "Ad Block Plus" (Chrome, FireFox, IE, Opera). Two different but very similar programs (comparison here), both are free and block over 90-95% of all ads on all sites (Viruses and malware have now been known to infect computers from advertisements on websites), and you will also notice most sites will load up considerably faster when ads are not loaded. On most news sites, over 50% of a web page's loading time is related to waiting around for the ad agency to delivery the ads to your computer. You might be slightly amazed at the performance increase while surfing your typical news websites. Specifically, I've noticed the front page of itulip to load up 2x faster after running one of these programs.

Step 5. Uninstall all software you are no longer using. Google anything that looks suspicious before uninstalling it (just in case it is an important piece of software). I strongly recommend removing ALL toolbars of any kind. Also if your problems started shortly after you installed some recent software, try uninstalling it to see if it makes a difference. Anytime you install any free software, ALWAYS read the prompts and never allow it to install toolbars or any other add-on software that is not critical to what you need. Nearly always, this add-on software ends up slowing down your compute or adding crap you just don't need.

Step 6. Clean up disk & registry - Install trial version of "CCleaner" which is a disk cleanup tool on steroids. The default settings it uses are generally safe to proceed with. Install it, run it, remove all the crap. Likewise you can keep it around for the trial period, uninstall it after done, or buy it. http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

Step 7. Anti-Virus - Install a *good* Anti-Virus software and do a full system check, and don't cheap out on this - Buy it after the trial period! A good antivirus has saved my bacon countless times. Below is a Q4 2013 review summary of the best ones (this evaluation is actually for full internet security suites not just an anti-virus, but the accuracy is very similar). I can personally vouch for ESET NOD32 (second on list). I would stay away from Norton as it tends to slow down your computer with excessive tasks and what we call in the industry "bloatware". Avast is free but let's through 6-8% of viruses, which IMO is too many. In short, I'd recommend either Kaspersky or ESET. I personally use ESET only because Kaspersky is made by Russians and I'm too paranoid to run Russian software on my PC (no offence to any Russians on iTulip), although they seem to have a good reputation out there, but I've yet to see any North American Enterprise run Kaspersky for the sole reason it's Russian software. Also, most of these companies sell Internet security suites which include an anti-virus but also many other tools. I personally only buy the anti-virus and don't install the other tools as I find they slow down the PC a bit and/or get in the way of using it with too many warnings and update requests etc.



Step 8. Make sure your windows Firewall is on. Control Panel/Firewall. Anytime Windows asks you if a program should create a firewall exception, only do so if you recognize the program, and always choose the "Public" setting, as it will maximize your security.

Step 9. Clean up your startup programs - Click Start button, and in the search box (or click "Run" in XP), type in: msconfig and hit enter. This will load up a windows configuration tool. Click "Startup" tab. Review each item with a checkmark on it, this is a list of all the programs that load up and constantly run on your computer after windows starts up. Most programs have a habit of entrenching themselves in here, where the vast majority need not be loaded at all. Google each one before removing just in case. About the only thing that should be started up are: Your antivirus program, audio/keyboard/mouse software for your PC. That's it. Nearly everything else can be unchecked in most cases. If you unchecked something that was important you can always check it back on.


Step 10. Run "Windows Update" manually and install all "important" or "security" updates. Optional ones are, well optional. Hide any updates you don't want to install so you don't have to see them again (i.e. install Arabic language packs). To do this, go to Control Panel and click "Windows Update" icon, or from start button, click Run or in the search bar type "Windows Update", then click the program.

Step 11. After everything is fixed and you are confident your PC is stable, fast and problem free, create another Restore Point and back it up, so you have confidence that if problems happen in the near future you can simply revert back without spending hours going through all these steps.

Good luck!

[don]

Re: Pop Up Advice

Thanks Adept and the rest of the 'tulipers input.

So far I put Vypre on - hope that's not a worthless protection program. It did find a lot of junk and does warn me of malicious pop ups. That's about all it seems to do.

Installed trial version of Malwarebytes. That dug out a lot on their recommended fast scan but not enough. Ran the thorough scan - about an hour and a half - which found more but still not enough. Just finished running full scan in Safe Mode. That found even more.

Next, check down your list!

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: Pop Up Advice

I'm suddenly getting very aggressive Pop Ups on practically every site and every click on a choice or link, including the 'tulip. Can't stop them. I downloaded a protection program, which scanned all my files and came up with a couple of miscreants but that hasn't slowed the Pop Ups. I increased Microsoft's filtering to high, dumped all the cookies. Now I get a warning of an unfriendly intruder but they're not stopped, only temporarily blocked. I have to manually delete each one and they come on like Zulus at Roarke's Drift. Any suggestions?

You definitely have a virus. Do an off line scan, backup your data and do a clean install from trusted media.

I just started using this:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...ewall/reviews/
I am also use noscript and a couple of things I picked up after that Applebaum video
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...betterprivacy/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...cting-cookies/
https://addons.mozilla.org/EN-US/fir...irect-cleaner/
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

keeping on top of all this stuff is difficult, but I am starting to think that this is just scratching the surface of a complex problem.

I don't generally post here anymore, but I thought it was important that everyone see the Applebaum video. It will change your life. Please watch it all the way through.

[don]

Re: Pop Up Advice

I'm now running Mozilla's Bluhell blocker with immediate results. Hopeful.

[don]

Re: Pop Up Advice

Appear to be having an easy time with Mozilla's cookie tracker as well.

Boffo!