The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #158373 Message #3745155
Posted By: Vashta Nerada
19-Oct-15 - 09:27 AM
Thread Name: Tech: Dumping popups
Subject: RE: Tech: Dumping popups
Chances are you've followed some of the "click bait" to see stories that sound gossipy or have scantily clad women. Those can expose your computer to a lot of ad ware crap or hijack it completely via some of the hostage software out there. Regular backups are advised.
In your browser of choice look through the preferences and select "block popups." That won't impact Mudcat but it will prevent a lot of those annoying screens taking over.
Any time one of those appears DON'T CLOSE IT WITH THE RED X IN THE CORNER. They often rewrite the code to change the meaning of the icons and your closing it could actually be approving a download. Instead, move your mouse down to the bottom of the screen in the task bar where the icons for all of your open programs reside. In an unoccupied portion of that bar, RIGHT CLICK your mouse and open "Start Task Manager." You can see what browser window has the current offending popup in the Applications tab of the task manager. Select it then at the bottom of the task manager screen click "End Task." That way you use the computer to close the offending window instead of clicking on a possibly reprogrammed "close" button.
Download and install the free versions of Malwarebytes (at this point it is an industry standard) and Adblock Plus, another free application.