They're everywhere. Whether checking the weather, yesterday's sports scores or just visiting someone's personal webpage, Internet users are assailed by a shower of advertising windows, commonly known as "pop-ups."
Although the majority of students who spoke with The Dartmouth, including Tami Peters '06, simply put up with the ubiquitous advertisements, others are taking advantage of new software that blocks the pop-ups.
Calvin Richardson '06, who finds the ads "annoying as hell," uses a program known as PopUp Killer to block the windows.
Another popular and free program is Panicware.com's PopUp Stopper. At just 500 kilobytes, the small file alerts users either by flashing or beeping every time it blocks an ad.
When tested by The Dartmouth, the program blocked two Angelfire advertisements, four Fortunecity windows, and the entrance and exit "1025 Hours Free!" pop-up ads at Aol.com.
A third program, adsubtract.com's AdSubtract Pro is an enhanced version of PopUp Stopper. Unlike PopUp Stopper, Pro also blocks banner ads, cleans Internet traces, and logs all ads blocked during a session.
However, after a 30-day free trial period, AdSubtract users must pay $29.95 for continued use. The file is also six times as large as PopUp Stopper, which adds to download time.
Niether PopUp Stopper or AdSubtract is Macintosh compatible; however, Macintosh users can try WebWasher.
For those who do not wish to download extra software, browser configuration can solve some but not all pop-up problems. Disabling active scripting in Internet Explorer's Internet Options menu stops pop-ups, but may inhibit normal web function.
Pop-up windows spontaneously appear onscreen shortly after the host site begins to load, and stay until closed by the user. Eye-catching animations and fonts take time to load, however, slowing down the progress of the target website's download, and sometimes freezing the computer.
Collin Corria '04, who uses the Internet for fantasy sports and stock watching, views the pop-ups as annoying but accepts their existence as a necessary evil accompanying Internet use.
"I want to see it once, but I don't want to see it over and over again," he said of the Orbitz ads on ESPN.com.
Pop-ups are present on most sites on the web, especially well-known and frequently visited pages such as Yahoo! and CNN.com. A slowdown in Internet revenue and sales has prompted many online companies to increase their use of pop-ups, simultaneously raising the blood pressures of web surfers all over the world.
This phenomenon has become so wide-spread over the past year that several big-name companies -- such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Dow Jones and Company -- filed a lawsuit this past June against Gator, an online advertising company.
Gator's free software enables users to store passwords and shopping information in exchange for an increase in onscreen pop-ups.
The companies contend that Gator targets the visitors of their websites without permission, and often offer ads for services which compete with the target site's own. For example, Gator users who visit Dow Jones' CareerJournal.com are subjected to pop-up ads generated by the Gator software for HotJobs.com, another job-hunting site.
