Unblockable popups

[Buffy]

First, go to this site:

 

http://www.quotationspage.com/search.php3

 

Did you see a couple of popup ads? Is your popup blocker turned on?

 

I have Firefox's popup blocker on (and no, the site is not an exception), but no matter what, the first time I go to this site in a single session (starting-shutting down FF). This site succeeds in popping up windows.

 

Does anyone know how they do it?

 

Nothin' says lovin' like something from the oven,

Buffy

[freeztar]

Interesting. I'm using IE7 and it blocked the first one and then about 30 secs. later one from casalemedia snuck through.

 

Now we know where you get all those quotes from.

[InfiniteNow]

Before the upgrade, those castalmedia adds would slip through when I came to Hypography, just like it did at the page Buffy referenced. I have pop-up on with a High filter level in IE7, and it still managed to get through every single time.

 

I'd also be curious to understand how this is done.

[C1ay]

No popups for me with FF and Ad Block Plus....

[mynah]

No pop-ups for me at that site with Firefox Ad Blocker (don't know what version). I do sometimes have a problem with animations moving across the screen, and I wonder if there is any way I could block every ad with the words "belly fat" in the title?

[alexander]

lol no popups for me either FF3, adblock, stylish adblock theme as well...

[CraigD]

Though I don't follow it in detail, my guess is that this script element

<!-- Casale Media 2005 © -->

<!-- Ad Format: Pop Under -->

<!-- Domain(s): quotationspage.com -->

<script language="Javascript"><!--

var d=new Date();var r=(d.getTime()%8673806982)+Math.random();var u=escape(window.location.href);

var host=' language="Javascript" src="http://as.casalemedia.com/s?s=';

document.write('<scr'+'ipt'+host+'62855&u='+u+'&f=1&id='+r+'"></scr'+'ipt>');

//--></script>

<!-- Casale Media 2005 © -->

is doing the magic. Expressions like "'<scr'+'ipt'" seem designed to defeat simple blockers.

 

Interestingly, when I opened the page with no blockers of any kind on, it popped up 2 browsers, but when I closed everything and followed the link to it again, it popped up nothing.

 

The page appears to clean up after itself, so you can't see the event that started all the fun - likely the body element's load attrib. With enought time and patience, I'm confident anyone could figure out what its up to by just writing to and reading from the host, but as I've no pressing desire to learn Casale's cunning tricks, I won't be doing this anytime soon

[freeztar]

Did you guys let your browser sit idle on that page for 30 secs.? That's when one popped through for me, not initially.

[C1ay]

Did you guys let your browser sit idle on that page for 30 secs.? That's when one popped through for me, not initially.

 

I intentionally let mine rest there for several minutes.....

[Tormod]

No popups in Safari.

 

And for the record, there should be no popups at Hypography either, it's been a while since I ditched them even for visitors (but some old sections might still have the code...). They pay well but they are really a nuisance.

[freeztar]

On my home computer I got no pop-ups (few minutes idle). I'm running FF 2.0x and Adblock add-on.

 

What version of FF are you running Buffy? Do you have Adblock?

 

On a side note, I highly recommend NoScript as a FF add-on if you don't already have it. It's awesome! :)

[Buffy]

Expressions like "'<scr'+'ipt'" seem designed to defeat simple blockers.

Yep, but I think the more sophisticated ones modify the window class to intercept all calls to window.open in js, which may be why Ad Block works.

Interestingly, when I opened the page with no blockers of any kind on, it popped up 2 browsers, but when I closed everything and followed the link to it again, it popped up nothing.

I've noticed this too, leading me to believe its either setting a cookie or is looking at the browser history timestamps, because it does seem to try to be "nice" and only do it once a day or once every restart of the browser.

On my home computer I got no pop-ups (few minutes idle). I'm running FF 2.0x and Adblock add-on.

I don't have Ad Block, but am interested in what other things defeat this mechanism. I don't have anything but the basic popup blocker in FF simply because I don't really seem to need it: this is one of the only sites that seems to beat it among those I go to (although I wouldn't be surprised if those porn sites you guys like have much more devious popup mechanisms! :) ).

 

My interest is not academic. Our software is web based, and we like to open up a separate window with all the browser menus and controls turned off, so its a completely controlled web app. Our number one tech support problem when people first start using it is to figure out all the popup blockers that people have and tell them how to let ours through. You'd be amazed at how many people have 4 or 5 different popup blockers that are *all* turned on (native, Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, Norton Internet, etc, etc, etc). We have figured out how to programatically catch only *some* of these, and we even see situations where when we try to open a test window and then see if its actually there a few milliseconds later gets *false positives* back from the browser!

 

It would be nice if we could at least catch all of them and then lead people through the "how do you disable all this stuff, but just for us."

 

So no, I'm not trying to come up with an evil way to force more ads on people! :hihi:

 

YouTube - snap crackle pop old rice krispies commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6TIsxTdrCU

 

He won't eat it, he hates everything, :hihi:

Buffy

[freeztar]

I don't have Ad Block, but am interested in what other things defeat this mechanism. I don't have anything but the basic popup blocker in FF simply because I don't really seem to need it: this is one of the only sites that seems to beat it among those I go to (although I wouldn't be surprised if those porn sites you guys like have much more devious popup mechanisms! :) ).

 

My interest is not academic. Our software is web based, and we like to open up a separate window with all the browser menus and controls turned off, so its a completely controlled web app. Our number one tech support problem when people first start using it is to figure out all the popup blockers that people have and tell them how to let ours through.

 

AdBlock is even more recommended in that case, imho.

 

You'd be amazed at how many people have 4 or 5 different popup blockers that are *all* turned on (native, Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, Norton Internet, etc, etc, etc).

 

Toolbars are a big no-no in my book. :hihi:

I'm not surprised in the least by what people inadvertently install on their system. Did I mention that I don't like toolbars? Well, I do have StumbleUpon so I can't criticize too much. :hihi:

 

We have figured out how to programatically catch only *some* of these, and we even see situations where when we try to open a test window and then see if its actually there a few milliseconds later gets *false positives* back from the browser!

If the thermometer doesn't work, make a new one. :hihi:

It would be nice if we could at least catch all of them and then lead people through the "how do you disable all this stuff, but just for us."

Why does your software trigger anti-popup software?

 

He won't eat it, he hates everything, :hihi:

Buffy

 

Mikey will eat it.

[REASON]

 

He won't eat it, he hates everything, :)

Buffy

 

Mikey will eat it.

 

No, no, no. The line is, "He likes it! Hey Mikey? :hihi:

[freeztar]

No, no, no. The line is, "He likes it! Hey Mikey? :hihi:

 

Where's the beef? :) :hihi:

[REASON]

Where's the beef? :shrug: ;)

 

:lol:

 

Fine. Have it your way. :hihi:

[Buffy]

Why does your software trigger anti-popup software?

Reread my post: in order to control the user's interactions and reduce "confusion" (our target users are only moderately tech savvy), we run our application in a window with the browser's menus toolbars, etc. *removed*: all you see is the window frame and our application is inside it, and we provide all the navigation within it. This is *extremely* common among web applications, and the web browsers all very cooperatively allow this manipulation of their windows.

 

Unfortunately, to do this removal (especially in these days of tabs and so forth) we need to launch a new browser window, and the only way to do this is through the same calls that the popup ads use. As a result, we need to find a way to make it easy for our users to, upon first logging in, determine exactly what they need to do to allow our app to be "approved for opening popups": its not that complicated, since most popup blocking software supports a mode for saying easily, "this one is okay," the problems are a) in order to lead people through it, we need to be able to *tell* that we're being blocked, and :lol: we need to deal with the fact that there may be a bunch of blockers all conspiring (and probably conflicting) with each other. In the case of a) the problem is that one of the techniques that the ad purveyors use is to detect blocking and try to work around it, so because we are trying to the same thing, the blockers are now busily spoofing by saying "oh yah, we showed the user your ad so you can stop trying."

 

We're almost at the point of actually writing plug-ins or installable applications on the desktop where we have the power to look at what's there and defeat it directly (kinda like trojan ad-ware does!), but we've been trying to avoid this like the plague because big F500 IT shops *hate* having to manage (or in some cases even *allow*) installation of software on user's desktops. If we can make this work with pure Javascript we are *much* better off.

Mikey will eat it.

Forgive him REASON, he's *way* to young to have actually seen this in anything but "I Love The 70's" on VH1.... :shrug:

 

Its not a car, its a Volkswagen, :hihi:

Buffy