How to Stop Pop-Up Ads

One of the major sources of revenue on the Internet is an advertisement. There are many ways in which ads are displayed by websites and one of the most aggressive and irritating approaches of advertisers is a 'Pop-Up Ad'.

When you visit some web sites, you will notice that the moment your web browser loads the page, additional windows pop up, with banner advertisements about products and offers. These are pop-up ads and they are desperate attempts of websites to gain advertising-generated revenue.

However, for a user who has an Internet connection with low bandwidth, these pop-ups serve to slow down the loading of web pages. Some of them can embed malicious codes on your computer, compromising its security. The time wasted in closing them is another reason for you to block them.

The web browser launched by Google, which has rapidly gained popularity, as one of the fastest browsers in the world, is Chrome. It comes with a number of inbuilt security features, which includes a facility to block pop-up ads from appearing.

In this browser, click on the 'spanner' symbol on the right side of the browser and select the 'Options' feature from the drop down list that appears. Next, click on the 'Under the Bonnet' tab. Now, click on the 'Content Settings' button, it will open up a window. Click 'Pop-Up Ads' and select the check box that says 'Do not allow any site to show pop-ups'.

Go to 'Tools → Options → Content Tab' and select the check box, which says - 'Block Pop-Up Windows' and your job is done.

Here is the procedure for blocking these ads on Internet Explorer. To do that, go to 'Tools → Pop-up Blocker' and select 'Turn On Pop-up Blocker'. You can open the pop-up blocker settings and set the level of blocking to 'High'.

Mac OS X uses the Safari web browser and here is the procedure for blocking pop-up ads in it. Click on the 'Safari' tab at the top of the browser and select the 'Block Pop-up Windows' option. You can directly activate this feature using the 'Command + K' keyboard shortcut on your Mac.

There are many software programs available as free downloads on the Internet, which work with your browser to block pop-ups. Some of these, which you could use are 'Pop-Up Stopper Free Edition', launched by Panicware, Internet Security 2006, launched by Trend Micro PC-Cillin, or the Google toolbar, which comes with a pop-up window block feature.

Some other softwares you can consider to block pop-up ads are, uBlock Origin and AdGuardby Raymond Hill, and Adblock Plus by Eyeo GmBH. AdGuard is a software that universally blocks pop-up ads almost all the major browsers.

The easiest way is to use the blocker feature, which is an inbuilt functionality in most web browsers. As suggested here, you could take the alternative route of installing special software programs that can block these ads effectively.