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The Internet Technology

Blocking Pop-ups at the ISP Level? 108

Posted by Cliff from the something-for-the-customers dept.
roXet asks: "I work for a small ISP that offers dial-up and DSL in Louisiana. In the wake of the big boys' new wave of pop-up and spam blocking advertisements, I am looking into providing these services for our customers. I hate the thought of filling my customers machines with proprietary software, if for no other reason than I see it creating a support nightmare for our call center. I have found several options for blocking spam at the network level, but I have yet to find a good solution for getting rid of pop ups. Has anyone found a good method of doing this at the ISP level?"
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Blocking Pop-ups at the ISP Level? More

Blocking Pop-ups at the ISP Level?

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  • possibilities (Score:4, Informative)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Monday January 05, 2004 @05:43PM (#7884731) Journal
    You can set them up with an alternative browser. Mozilla Firebird is fast and does popup blocking, and is by no means proprietary.

    Blocking website popups at the ISP level would be hard. Sure, you could set up your own http proxy and replace occurances of "open(" with something else, but it's so easy for a web site to obfuscate their popup code to get past such a filter and you would also be breaking countless sites that don't use popup ads.

    You can no doubt block gator and a bunch of other insidious adware though. Just block all their domains and executable filenames. Most low end firewall/routers have a url filtering feature that's adequate for this. The people who are hit by the most popups often have one or more of these installed and don't know about it.
    • There are 2 types of popup blockers.

      The kind that don't work - The one's where they try to determine whether or not a popup is an advertisement.

      And the kind that work - The one's that block ALL popup's.

      Apple's Safari uses the latter kind, as well as the Google Toolbar [google.com] for IE6, which blocks all popups as well.

      I've never seen a site get a popup through.

      The only argument I've seen against popup blockers that block all popups is that they will block important popups that need to be seen. But you will notic

      • Re:possibilities (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Gregg Alan ( 8487 )
        There are 2 types of popup blockers.

        Nope, three. Konqueror has 'smart' popup blocking where it allows popups that result from an action I take (click a link, keystroke...) and blocks the rest.
        It's great because it doesn't break sites that use popups for various legitimate reasons.
        • > Konqueror has 'smart' popup blocking where it allows popups that result from
          > an action I take (click a link, keystroke...) and blocks the rest.

          This is what Mozilla does as well. It is IIRC Opera (or was last I knew) that
          just blocks all new windows. IE, of course, does not have popup blocking built
          in, though I speculate a future version will. There are third-party utilities
          available to give it this feature, naturally.

          Recent Mozilla.org browsers also have the ability to show an icon in the statu
        • Passive or active popups may both be legimate or illegitmate. For passive consider the current situation. For active consider a commercial site replacing every link with a javascript function that causes a popup and then redirects you to the correct location.
      • Actually not true - Safari (and others), while not trying to be clever about it, actually block popups that aren't directly linked to something you do.

        So, clicking on a button where the window.open() is called from the onClick handler will work. window.open()s in onLoad handlers et al will not work.

        At least, thats the way my Safari works (1.1 on Panther).

        Although also, in my experience, Mozilla gets it perfect - no naughty popups but ones that I want to happen (even window.open()s in bare script execute
      • There are 2 types of popup blockers.

        The kind that don't work - The one's where they try to determine whether or not a popup is an advertisement.

        And the kind that work - The one's that block ALL popup's.

        The Proxomitron uses the first kind, and it's very good at blocking only ad popups: I see one or two ad popups a year, and I don't have to turn the filtering off for sites that make honest use of popups.
        • The Proxomitron uses the first kind

          Specifically, the (default) Proxomitron filter replaces window.open with a javascript that only allows opens if they were immediately preceded by a mouse-up (indicating that the user actually clicked on something), and disallows pop-ups immediately after a window load (another filter unilaterally edits out onUnload scripts).

          So it's much like the heuristics other posters have noted are used by Konqueror or Safari.
      • Google allows you to turn on a site-specific allow for pop-ups. It lets you know when it has smacked down another pop-up so you know that something is trying to force its way onto your screen. So if something from a site you trust was giving you a pop-up, you could opt to turn off pop-ups from that site.

  • Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 05, 2004 @05:43PM (#7884732)
    Wouldn't that involve the ISP looking at what you're doing, and be a horrid invasion of privacy?
    I definitely do not want my ISP monitoring my packets. And yes, I expect many replies to this to say "Oh they watch everything you do". I don't subscribe to that level of conspiracy theory.

    propz to GNAA.
    • The log files from squid or whatever are so huge that many admins send them to /dev/null

    • ISPs can aready monitor your internet traffic whether or not they use a proxy server, actually, except for traffic using end-to-end encryption (SSL, SSH). The proxy filtering software is a service the enquirer intends to run for customers who ask for it. I think the proxy aproach is just the perfect way. Pop-up ads are generaly served from the ad network's domain, for now (unti pop-up blockers become too popular).
    • Well, it's hardly a "conspiracy theory." While I can't speak for every ISP, I know several that do in fact monitor traffic very closely. I myself have been monitored and have had long discussions with several ISPs about this. The only way you can avoid being monitored is to have a very large ISP and try not to attract any attention to yourself.
      • hmmph, the question is... how to notice you are being monitored?
      • I don't know how you came to the conclusion you were being monitored, but it seems unlikely to me. I work for an ISP with about 1000 customers (dialup and DSL) and the only way we could possibly monitor traffic would be to install a packet sniffer on our gateway machines and piece together things from there. I guess it would be different if we had an http proxy, but how many ISPs would go through the trouble of setting up a proxy server and why would they bother?
    • as a netadmin for a mom and pop isp in nh, i always have to reply to these with "some isps dont look at your data at all, ever". what do i track? i track when your username connected, when it hung up, which phone number you called from (which if you block with *67 or whatever it is, will nullify that line in my log). if you use my mail server then i will have a record of email that came in for you from which server, but just the tcp connection. that data disappears after a day. if you use hotmail, i ha

  • Mozilla (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Justin Ames ( 582967 )
    Instead of proprietary software you could distribute browsers that are open, and block pop-ups and spam. All this being default settings.
    • ...or just use one of the many open-source advert filtering proxies, neatly avoiding the need to re-educate the rest of the family in how they do things with the new browser.
    • Also has the advantage of not requiring new gizmos to be installed on each machine, as all the machines on one network can access the same filtering proxy.

      (damn /.'s lack of edit button for really good ideas!)

  • Is this wise? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @05:44PM (#7884744) Homepage Journal
    The problem with popups isn't the window it opens, but rather it opening without expressed permission. Use Opera or Mozilla and popups are no longer a complaint. Why filter at the ISP level? There are some sites that use them legitimately. (Not auto popups, but opening of popup windows via click.)

    • I agree. I sometimes have to turn off Safari's pop-up blocker (which makes me enjoy the fact that it's a preference that's right in the main menu and I dont have to open any preference panes or anything). For instance, when I do online banking, there's an option to view a scanned image of the check, and it opens in a new window. For some reason, the algorithm used by Safari decides the window is no good and blocks it.

      So, your service is only as good as the algorithm. I'd say leave it up to the customer. Ma

      • I agree. I sometimes have to turn off Safari's pop-up blocker (which makes me enjoy the fact that it's a preference that's right in the main menu and I dont have to open any preference panes or anything).

        That's why you should use Camino [mozilla.org] instead of Safari. It offers selective pop-up blocking - the ability to allow unrequested pop-ups for a selected sites. (It also offers selective cookie acceptance.. allow them from 'google.com', but not from 'doubleclick.net', for instance).

    • If the ISP does decide to do this, I would hope that they code up a quick applet that would, for instance, sit in your System Tray (enough customers use Windows, and for those that don't they can publish the API; or just do Windows, Mac, and Linux and you've pretty much got the bases covered).

      All the user would have to do is single-click on the applet and it toggles state from, say, green to red (or back) -- green == popups are blocked; red == "the full Internet experience."

      This would allow the ISP to s

  • Google Bar 2.0 (Score:2, Informative)

    by crapnutassneck ( 243159 ) *
    If you do want to use IE, the Google toolbar has a good popup blocker.
  • And you can redirect known banner ads, popups, etc. It can't get 100% of popups, as that is higher-level application layer. But you can block html to known "bad" hosts. The biggest issue is that it may inadvertantly block stuff people want to see (such as the random person that actually wanted to buy the wireless video camera).
  • You would need a way to tell the difference between a popup that the user wants and a popup that they don't.
    1. Strip all javascript popup code from the html as it passes through your proxy.
    2. Block all access to specific URLs that the popups try to load. Of course, the popup window will still appear, it'll just be empty.

    1 will never work and 2 sucks (plus it'll never work).

    I'm happiest with konqueror's 'smart' popup blocking where it doesn't block popups that result from an action I take.

  • google (Score:2, Informative)

    by BigBir3d ( 454486 )
    toolbar.google.com (works with IE, and now blocks pop-ups) is another option from mozilla etc (which may not work with certain sites).

  • The only answer - Mozilla (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @05:53PM (#7884831)
    A long time ago, I signed up with a local ISP and they sent me a copy of Netscape Navigator. As a result, it was a few years before I even knew that MSIE existed.

    Do your users a favor. A big favor. Strongly insist that they use a modern, good quality web browser, like Mozilla, and make copies easily available.
    • > Strongly insist that they use a modern, good quality web browser

      You don't have to insist; just put it in the Internet Connection Kit that you
      send them and have your installer set it as the default browser and change out
      the IE shortcuts on the desktop for your approved browser. If the user wants
      specifically to use IE, they still can, but most will just click the big fat
      shortcut on the desktop and be happy. Make sure you configure it so that
      unrequested windows are not loaded by default.

      While you're a

  • replies so far (Score:5, Insightful)

    by itwerx ( 165526 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @05:55PM (#7884858) Homepage
    There have been several replies already saying "give them a different browser". However, reading the request, it is quite clearly stated that changes to the client machine are not desireable due to the support time involved.
    So shaddap about the browsers already!! :)
    But, back to the question at hand, I'm afraid that blocking at the ISP level will be:

    A - fairly difficult due to obfuscations. The ISP really isn't going to be doing anything different than a normal pop-up blocking mechanism at the client would in terms of figuring out what is or is not pop-up code and the pop-up people (insert scary mental image here) are already doing their level best to defeat that.

    B - potentially a legal problem as any blocking mechanism that the ISP implements at the network level will, in effect, be interfering with the clients' "communication" with the website in question. The FCC might have something to say about that.
    However, I'm sure there could be a way to set up a database and have people opt-in for pop-up blocking service. IANAL but I would think that them actually requesting such service would clear most legal hurdles.

    As for solutions, I wonder how hard it would be to extract the relevant code from Open Source browsers and make a little routine to rewrite/replace scripts on the fly...? It would almost have to be a proxy though so you could track (and allow) pop-ups which were actually requested.
    • B - potentially a legal problem as any blocking mechanism that the ISP implements at the network level will, in effect, be interfering with the clients' "communication" with the website in question. The FCC might have something to say about that.
      However, I'm sure there could be a way to set up a database and have people opt-in for pop-up blocking service. IANAL but I would think that them actually requesting such service would clear most legal hurdles.

      I don't think the problem is with the FCC a

      • once you start filtering - you loose your common carrier status
        Good point! I hadn't though of that little twist. (I am obviously NAISP either :).
        • I'm no lawyer, but I don't think you'd lose it if it was an opt-in feature. I can tell the telephone company to block incoming calls from people who have anonymous caller id.

        • Re:replies so far (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jc42 ( 318812 )
          once you start filtering - you loose your common carrier status


          Good point! I hadn't though of that little twist.

          Indeed. And this is a good excuse for following the other suggestion: Supply your customers with tools that let them do the filtering themselves. The latest mozilla/netscape browser is a good start. But start studying the subject, and try to collect tools to give the customers control. Put together a good web site that they can download from. Try setting up your own mailing list and/or

          • Ignoring the legal side of things for a minute, it would be possible to block unrequested popups at the ISP level. The filter could run through a simple http proxy and merely strip out the offending javascript code.

            Of course, the devil is in the details, I would venture to say that blocking all unrequested popups would be difficult with more obfuscated javascript code. Of course, the more complicated processing you perform, the more CPU you require. Unless you had a really really big proxy server cluster
            • Looking at the feature list it appears not to have that functionality built in. I.e. you would have to use the Perl function hook which it provides to write your own code for that.
      • It is technologically feasable to cut a majority of spam with a very simple implementation of existing software. (Combinations of blacklisting and text pattern matching)
        It is technologically feasable to cut a majority of ads from your users browsers. (proxies already rewrite a number of things, it is trivial to make them redirect to a blank image.)
        It is technologically feasable to cut a majority of pop-ups from your users sessions. (proxies, yadda yadda.)

        It is not, however, technically feasable to filter c
    • You might also have a potential difficulty with copyright -- the altered version of the page without the pop-up code could be a "derivitave work", based on the original web page. Often, permission is required in order to create a derivitave work based on a copyrighted work.

      This post is not intended to constitute legal advice. If you need such advice, ask a lawyer, not Slashdot.
  • Well if your upto the bigbrother aspects of it. run a http proxy, in transparant hijack mode for example, so that users dont have to config a thing. And start filtering content for known popup codes, and you could use techniques designed for banner blocking, such as html washing or just blocking certain blacklisted domains.

    • No, dammit (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 )
      Argh. No. Not transparent proxies, unless you're providing an opt-in mechanism (say, a value-added service) to do so. It's *so* frusterating when ISPs start mucking with my network connection (firewall incoming and outgoing SMTP or transparently proxy it, block outgoing DNS, etc).

      ISPs bitch about how they can't provide tiered service. Spam blocking, popup blocking, firewalling, are *all* great things to toss in value-added packages to provide tiered service. They, however, drive many people (who don't
      • Another option would be a opaque proxy and to provide a mini application that sets it up.

        Most browsers will accept a URL to a "proxy.js" in the proxy config options, so the user doesn't have to type in all the hostname/ports for ftp, http, https, ...

        eg http://proxy.isp.net/proxy.pac

        Inside that goes something like this:

        function FindProxyForURL(url, host) { return "PROXY proxy.isp.net:3128"; }

  • I doubt you're going to find what you're looking for. You'd need a proxy that would parse the HTML and strip out offending javascript. That sounds like it would be pretty tough, and that it would eat a lot of cycles on your end.

    Another problem is that you need to keep some popups -- ones that are generated by clicks -- and toss out others, the ones that show up automatically.

    I don't know how browsers solve the problem, but I'd be interested to know.

    If I were going to try to implement it, I'd probably s
    • I don't know how browsers solve the problem, but I'd be interested to know.

      The JavaScript interpreter ignores the calls to open the window, depending on how the call was made. This technique would not work on the ISP side, because it would require the ISP's server to parse and edit the JavaScript on every page it sends to the users.

      • The proxy I use (adzap w/ squid [sourceforge.net]) doesn't block the popups, but it blocks the page that would load in the popped-up window. This can reduce total popups if the popup also has more popup code within it, as that code will never load.

        Now that Mozilla has popup blocking, I don't need that part of adzap anymore, but adzaps banner blocking is great, too.

  • Yes, please do tell... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My company uses popups and would like them to not be blocked. So please share what techniques you're using for blocking so we can try to get around them. Thanks.
  • Spam and popups are two very, very different problems. I do think SPAM is very capable of being handled at ISP level in most cases, but pop ups are a browser problem. As long as you use a decent browser, such as Mozilla, which blocks them easily, you can't do a thing about it - unless you can filter http traffic and somehow block all javascript, which to my knowledge is not possible or desirable. Just give all your clients a CD with Mozilla on it, and tell them to use that. For most pages, it renders ju
  • I'm a recent convert from IE after getting sick of all the popups day in and day out.

    Mozilla Kicks a$$ for blocking pop-up ads.

    Either that or Build a custom app for your customers.

    Dolemite
    _______________

  • Blacklist (Score:3, Informative)

    by Tyrdium ( 670229 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @06:05PM (#7884942) Homepage
    A good blacklist should have zero false positives, and still block a good deal of ads. I use Dan Pollock's hosts file [someonewhocares.org], and it works pretty well. It blocks Hotmail's in-page ads, along with a lot of others. It also has some sites that set malicious tracking cookies and popup traps blacklisted. Of course, you should check each url for validity, but it should work pretty well. Also, I suggest you put a page on your site that contains suggestions for Internet security, including links (and preferably easy tutorials) to things like Adaware, Spybot, and the like. Oh, and a link to Firebird (or Mozilla) would be good, too... ;)
    • The suggestion to provide links to empower your users is a good one. I would also include links to firewalls (Kerio, Tiny, ZoneAlarm), virus scanners (www.grisoft.com, housecall.antivirus.com as well as Norton, McAfee, etc.) and maybe even GRC.net.

      By providing these helpful links you empower your users while not taking the responsibility to support all these configurations.
      • Sorry, grc.COM [grc.com], not .net. Maybe I should go home and get some sleep.
      • I wish Tiny or ZoneAlarm would release a branded version for isps that removes all output, maybe saving it to an encoded file to send to isps. I'm tired of people that arn't proper admins using firewalls then complaining to me about mundane stuff like a "portsweep attack!" or whatever fear mongering language they use now to scare people into registering.
    • Really nice site.

      I use a method like SurfControl do to kill almost all popups thru my firewall. SurfControl act as a proxy or pass-by filter. It uses a database of advertising sites and blocks them. By applying the same filtering in my firewall, with the Dan Pollock hosts file, I can achieve a very good level of filtering on all my hosts.

      To answer the question, by applying filtering thru a proxy (squid for example), you can give your uses a way to choose and if so to block ads/popups.

  • Offer a well-maintained proxy to your users (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cecil ( 37810 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @06:06PM (#7884959) Homepage
    A popular solution is Privoxy [privoxy.org]'s popup blocking chained with Squid [squid-cache.org]'s caching. In my opinion, that's the way to go. Privoxy by default also blocks ads and webbugs and nasty javascript and other things, but you can disable those features.

    These could probably be configured as a transparent proxy if you don't want to set it up manually on users' computers, but speaking as a power user, I would never sign up with an ISP that stuck me with a proxy I couldn't avoid.

    • Privoxy by default also blocks ads and webbugs and nasty javascript and other things, but you can disable those features.

      The way it gets around, say, certain kinds of Javascript, is by rewriting the function text as it goes by. But it doesn't know what is and isn't actually a script. Any webpage containing the word "open" followed by an open parenthesis -- there's one in the comment currently at the top of this page -- gets rewritten to "PrivoxyWindowOpen(..." to defang the Javascript, even when it,

      • Of course, then people just get around that by making the javascript look like

        code = "window"+"open"+"(extra_open_commands)";
        eval(cod e);

        Good luck trying to get around all the possible combinations of doing that. In fact, google uses something like this for their ads -- read their JS.


        • No argument from me. I think the good folks at Privoxy are going to have to give up eventually. Alternatively, when users figure out which sites are being assholes about their JS, simply put them on the list of sites for which Privoxy just strips all JS, rather than trying to keep most of it.

  • Proxomitron (Score:4, Informative)

    by cybermancer ( 99420 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @06:09PM (#7885001) Homepage
    http://www.proxomitron.info/

    Proxomitron is a proxy that provides that as well as many other features. Since it is a proxy you could put it on your servers and provide access only for your subscribers. Make it optional. Most good browsers offer easy switching between proxy and non-proxy mode.

    Proxomitron offers more then just popup blocking, and also by letting them use the ISP as a proxy they have an additional level of anonymity.

    You would need to configure Proxomitron to a useful, but not too invasive level, or offer multiple proxies at different levels of restrictiveness. Then the use can pick which one they want depending on their needs. Document it all really well on your support site.
    • http://www.proxomitron.info/ [proxomitron.info] I forgot to make that url a link. Sorry.
    • I'm not sure the Proxomitron scales well enough to be used at an ISP level. I know I've had trouble with it handling more than 40 or so connections at a time, but that might just be the fact that I was running it on a Win98 box.
      • I'm not sure the Proxomitron scales well enough. . .

        That wouldn't surprise me. I also noticed that the Proxomitron projects is listed as dead [proxomitron.org].

        So use that idea with another proxy server - either off the shelf, or write your own. They are pretty simple really.
        • That wouldn't surprise me. I also noticed that the Proxomitron projects is listed as dead.

          Listing it as "dead" is somewhat misleading. The program itself is no longer being developed, but anyone can write filters for it, and filter development is still quite active. (See proxomitron.info [proxomitron.info])
    • I have been using Proxomiton for well over a year now. It is extremely easy to set up and install and I never have any problems with pop-ups. As an added bonus I don't even see or download most banner ads either - this is VERY helpful when I'm stuck on my 56k, speeding up things greatly.

      As Cybermancer said, just set it up and have your clients use it as a proxy. They will be thrilled!
  • Here [webwasher.com]. The version free for non-commercial use is no longer available, though (pity!)

  • For those insisting on IE (Score:3, Informative)

    by bryanp ( 160522 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @06:38PM (#7885325)
    Mozilla is great but let's face it, for a lot of people The Internet means Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. So, as part of the setup get all of your new users to install either the Google Toolbar [google.com] or the Avant Browser [avantbrowser.com] add-on for IE. They both do an excellent job of blocking popups in IE.
  • And what happens when websites sue you for denying them income because you blocked their popups?

    I frequent several sites, arstechnica.com would be the most prominent, which ask that you do not block ads or popups, as they are the revenue stream, no matter what personal views you may have on advertising the net.

    1: Block popup ads
    2: Revenue per popup goes down
    3: Popup prices go down
    4: More people buy popups for advertising
    5: More popups! You Lose!

    And I suggest that all of you who will inevitably reply sayi
    • 5: More popups! You Lose!

      Don't worry, it's just as easy for me to automatically block two popups as one.

      --
      Benjamin Coates
    • 1. I think I lost you somewhere between the part where pop-up ads became less effective and the part where advertisers buy more of them.
      IANAWebMaster, but I would think that a reduction in the effectiveness of pop-up ads would result in a reduction in the number of pop up ads.

      3. If you want to support a site, then *you* can enable the pop-up ads for that site (not hard on mozilla). Don't force everyone on the internet to view ads for a website that only you may like (that'd be like requiring atheists t

    • Furthermore: an ISP (or its software) can't distinguish between pop-ups a user wants/needs, and those a user doesn't; and blocking ads may force the user to violate their AUP.

      I know of several sites that use an auto-pop-up login dialog or have an AUP that prohibits the blocking of ads from the site.

      To make matters worse, there are alreay some sites that are using TV-like advertising -- any link click could be replaced by a full-screen on-page animated (flash or image) advert that has Javascript ensuring

    • You know, I'm willing to bet that most people didn't have a problem with banners as long as they were static. I even clicked on a few now and then and actually even bought something once or twice. Pop-ups on the other hand are just downright obtrusive and rude, and before I started blocking them I was too busy trying to close the stupid things to bother about reading their content.
  • Just put a website informing of means (with links) to avoid these popups: alternative browser - there are plenty of them: Avant Browser, MyIE, Mozilla, Opera etc. And let them choose by themself. It is not in ISP buissnes what an user is doing with his (or her) own bandwith - mind that. AFAIR Google Toolbar [google.com] also blocks popups and it does not involve switching browser (which my problematic) - it just works and weights about 500KB.
  • You don't need to do anything (in fact, it is better that you don't). The IE upgrade coming down the pipeline in summer will have auto popup blocking. Check the latest post on the main slashdot page.

  • Doesn't have to be all or nothing... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WoTG ( 610710 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:13PM (#7886703) Homepage Journal
    a lot of posts (rightly) mention that most known tricks to blocking pop-ups will present problems for the small minority of users who want the pop-up (or websites where legitimate pop-ups happen to fall into the filter). Perhaps the solution would be some sort of "opt-in". Similar to opting into the spam blocking at Yahoo Mail (and I suppose Hotmail). A little setting through a web interface to enable or disable the pop-up blocking.
  • Keep your grubby mits off my packets.

  • Please, don't. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Phexro ( 9814 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:47PM (#7886916)
    I'd like like to plea with you (and all ISPs) not to do anything like this.

    As far as I know, your only options are:
    * Making the user use some sort of filtering software, e.g. Proximotron or Google Toolbar.
    * Making the user use a browser with built-in popup blocking.
    * Filtering HTTP requests.

    I recently had a big problem getting an XML-RPC based app to work. Turns out that Proximotron had been installed (without my knowledge) on the client system, and was adding it's popup blocking stuff to the XML-RPC response. While this is fine for HTML, it is definitely not ok for XML.

    You can argue that XML-RPC/SOAP is a perversion of the HTTP standard, but apps using it are already deployed, and as a network admin I have to deal with it. Please don't make my job harder.
  • Simply set up a proxy server on your network (NOT IN BETWEEN) and then tell people how to set up the proxy server.

    Let users have capability of unmolested connection OR anti-crap proxy filter connection. Everybody's happy.
  • You either take control of their computer %100( ex: corporate controlled, they need the BOFH ; I hope you see the stupidity levels involved in the publics usage of well their own drones), advertise at em(same as one just a lucrative corporation) , or provide bulletproof software/support.

    I can use windows, I can keep it healthy; argue with an idiot and you are an idiot. ; but the public is not ready for it so we have a job market for "the computer guy" , side effect of the American economy IMO. I would hypo
  • If you Just resolve some domains and sub domains you can get alot of em and speed up your customers connections too... Just beaware of what is underlying what your "Breaking"..

    I doubt anyone you want to find anything in the ads*.doubleclick.com domain :)
  • I suggest set up a proxy to do the filtering, and instruct users who want it to configure the proxy. Or, install a transparent proxy and have a proxy to bypass it for users who DO want pop-ups.
  • I didn't expect a quick and easy answer to this one, and I didn't get it. I only hoped someone might have figured it out.

    Forcing my users through a proxy server is not going to be an acceptable answer, although the google toolbar may be. I may also think about recommending Pop Up Killer (http://sourceforge.net/projects/puk/).

    The only other solution that I thought of was taking one of the pop-up blocking host files that you find out on the internet and putting that in my dns to point those domains to local
    • Most users are too lazy and/or ignorant to even realize their computer is gradually becoming more and more "broken" because of all the shit that gets force fed to it by their surfing the web with five year old operating systems that have zero security. Even when they have brand new systems they still end up surfing the net as admin with desktop security set to "rape my peecee, please" and so every few weeks have to call someone to "fix" their computer for them. "2.5GHZ and 512MB RAM and your computer is slo
    • 1. Transparently blacklist generalized/malicious junk like double click, gator, web bugs, various other advert networks and drive-by downloaders.

      2. Offer different proxies with multiple levels of popup/junk filtering that your savvy customers can opt-into.

      3. Send out a CD with free versions of Ad-Aware [lavasoftusa.com], Spybot S&D [safer-networking.org], and so on. Or point them to links like the online version of X-Cleaner [spywareinfo.com] or one [trendmicro.com] of [ravantivirus.com] many [pandasoftware.com] online [symantec.com] virus [bitdefender.com] scans.

      4. You could also be a real saint and figure out how to put most of the important Wind

    • What's the difference between you blocking popups, and you substituting "local" advertisements for all banner ads?

      In both cases, you can make the argument that you're making things better for your customers. Instead of showing them popups, or lousy ads that they don't care about, you can put your own ads in there which are probably more relevant. After all, isn't it better to see an ad for the local car dealership than one for Gator?

      Of course, no matter how noble your intentions, you're still committing c
  • Has any one suggested privoxy over squid? Privoxy has the added benifit of putting a little message at the bottom of the page that says "adds blocked by privoxy" and it's disableable from the user's end, and i can block more than just popups, advertisments too. If you wanted it to be opt in, run privoxy on a seperate port (instead of squid's transparent mode) and make people set thier browser's proxy setting to block proxies, and they have thier choice.

    Be warned no matter what scheme you choose, the user m

  • This story interested me because nearly half of our users have come to us requesting pop-up blocking within the company. We use IpCop [ipcop.org] as our proxy/firewall for over 100 users. I'm sure someone could rig Dan's Guardian or some content filter out there to do the job, but we have had very good success with Goggle's latest toolbar for IE. The users can keep using the browser of their choice, the toolbar lets them search quickly, and the toolbar blocks popups. We have also blocked the spyware sites that we are a

  • OK, a little off-topic maybe, but I got sick and tired with popups and spyware at work today so here's what I did.
    1. Rolled out IE-SPY AD [uiuc.edu] through the user's netlogon scripts.
    2. Slowly adding the worst of the offending sites to the blacklist on our isa servers

    Doing that for a 60 user company is a lot different to doing it for an ISP though, you'll want something like proxomitron [proxomitron.info] but on a much larger scale.

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