BS: Yikes! watch yer mouse hand!

Subject: BS: Yikes! watch yer mouse hand!
From: GUEST,CupOfTea at Work
Date: 22 Oct 13 - 05:57 PM

So I'm reading a perfectly wonderful thread about YT releases that made me cheer and then noticed a LARGE clickable ad on the side with "Defund Obamacare" as the headline.

I happen to be on the other side of this one, and I'm not gonna debate that issue, (I don't teach pigs to sing either) BUT I do have this horrid habit of accidentally clicking things when my mouse runs over them. I've inadvertently deleted letters, switched words around, duplicated things. Makes me annoyed with m'self. I'd be MUCH more annoyed and find it scary that I could accidentally trigger an endorsement for an issue I do not agree with.

If random weirdness like this (it was a way unflattering picture of the President) is the price of some financial support for Mudcat, I can live through having it pop up on my screen. I just don't want to punch the YES button for someone who'd rather punch me in the nose, yanno? Insignificant as it may be, I'd rather have my intentions be intentional instead of accidental.

With hope that I'm the only one with a jumpy mouse hand,

Joanne in Cleveland

Subject: RE: BS: Yikes! watch yer mouse hand!
From: Elmore
Date: 22 Oct 13 - 08:23 PM

Joanne: At least you're in Cleveland Ohio. not Cleveland, Georgia, where some fool stands on an overpass with a sign that reads "Support the troops. Impeach Obama."

Subject: RE: BS: Yikes! watch yer mouse hand!
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 22 Oct 13 - 08:49 PM

With all the trash on "modern" websites, you don't need to click anything to get popup ads. Merely passing your mouse pointer over (or close to) some of the poisoned hot spots lots of sites contain can open a popup. Some pages are so full of this crap that it's hard to get the pointer past them even to scroll down so you can read the article you intended to look at.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Yikes! watch yer mouse hand!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Oct 13 - 09:35 PM

Ad blocking software helps with some of that, but I agree, you need to watch it if you have a twitchy mouse hand.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Yikes! watch yer mouse hand!
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 23 Oct 13 - 03:10 AM

I love reading the political cartoons in my favourite paper's stable & I've learnt to hold my curser way outside the Firefox window after more than once opening an unwanted ad on my way to a cartoonist's page.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Yikes! watch yer mouse hand!
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Oct 13 - 07:29 AM

Firefox and Ad Block Plus works like a charm. Few get through.

Subject: RE: BS: Yikes! watch yer mouse hand!
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Oct 13 - 10:35 AM

Well, I STILL use the Proxomitron program, (level 3)and see very few ads... and I can load "level 4" configuration and see NO ads. I suppose levels 5 & 6 would stop me from seeing anything.... gotta try it one of these days.

Subject: RE: BS: Yikes! watch yer mouse hand!
From: Big Ballad Singer
Date: 23 Oct 13 - 12:10 PM

The Opera browser and Avast! anti-virus both have great pop-up blockers as well as (in the case of Avast!) really good spyware/malware blocking.

We've had some overpass-sign-waving clods in our area of late as well.

Too bad there's no program for slapping the signs out of their hands and chasing them up the road with a swift kick in the ass.

[/rabbit trail]

You may, these days, without any fear of being paranoid, also safely assume that as much specific information about you as possible (IP address, location, ISP info, etc) is being harvested aggressively by the purveyors of those advertisements as well, pop-up ads or no.

Subject: RE: BS: Yikes! watch yer mouse hand!
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 23 Oct 13 - 05:46 PM

In the area of hidden traps, I pulled an old reference book off the shelf this morning with the intention of scanning it (to .pdf) so I could trash the book.

The book had a CD bound into it that claimed to have a pdf copy of the book on it, so I popped it into the drive to see if I could save the trouble of scanning all 790 pages. I'd used the book, but never looked at the CD.

My Norton wouldn't let me copy all the files off the CD due to "Malware in file *** blocked."

I shredded the CD and scanned the paper, since the publisher likely wouldn't have given me a new CD (© 1999) and besides the Adobe PDF version the book talked about has been obsolete for several years. Adobe has changed the name of their "PDF Maker" at least three times since the book came out.

Ya never know when or where the junk will show up.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Yikes! watch yer mouse hand!
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 24 Oct 13 - 01:46 PM

Hi, Cup of Tea. Have you experimented with the choices under Accessability which allow you to control how sensitive your mouse is and how fast it moves? It might help you and your mouse to get along better.

or try using a different finger than the index finger to do your clicking. The middle and ring fingers are less jumpy than the index finger. It takes practice to get the habit, but it's worth it.