Special Report: Think Twice - Results May Not Be Nice
Last
month, WhitePages.com wisely stopped ad
networks from
delivering ads to its site after they were
found to contain fake
antivirus malware. Other respected sites
such as the Drudge
Report, The New York Times, and the San
Francisco Chronicle
have also reportedly been carrying ads
containing malware but
as of this writing, I haven't seen any
reports that they are taking
corrective action. Perhaps their revenue
streams are dictating
that they look the other way?
You know the familiar routine: you go to a
Web site you believe to be reputable and are
greeted with a popup or other intrusive ad
that announces your computer has been
infected with malware, and you can
rid your
computer of the nasties with just a bit of
plastic in the form of a
credit card. Or, even more innocently, you
are offered a
scan of your system. The scan is free and of
course it will
detect all manners of malware in your system
that will
be removed but only if you purchase
XYZ
software. Sometimes these devious ads will
even place malware in your computer, so there
will be something to remove and thereby
demonstrate the application's
"effectiveness."
It's important to realize that anything
clickable on a popup
could trigger whatever payload that popup
carries. The
payload could be any form of malware to
include a virus or
Trojan. Note that the operative word here is
"could".
Certainly, not all ads and popups contain
these. Many are
simply mechanisms by which the owner of that
Web site hopes
to attain some modicum of revenue. The real
problem is, how
do you separate the good from the evil?
Those ads and
popups with the hidden payload are certainly
not going to
identify themselves as such, so the safest
route is likely to avoid
them altogether.
Avoidance can be accomplished by not visiting
any site that
carries ads or that you don't have 100% trust
in. Now, that's
really oversimplification and to practice
that would mean you
are avoiding the value and richness of the
Internet as an
entertainment and research tool. Far better,
it seems, is to simply
block ads and popups in some manner. Most
browsers allow you to do this to some extent,
but are not 100% successful.
You could block ad servers and malicious Web
sites by editing
the Windows HOSTS file. That's the file that
contains the address network nodes on a
computer network; or, in short, it can be
considered as the computer's address book.
Edited correctly, you can use this method to
block Web sites by entering your own
computer's Internet Protocol (IP) address so
that it will be calling itself unsuccessfully
and never reach the offending ad server.If
you choose to tackle the challenge
from this angle, read the procedures at
http://allthingsmarked.com/2006/08/28/howto-block-websites-
using-the-hosts-file/ . If your browser of
choice is Internet
Explorer 7, you can block Web sites with the procedure
described at
http://www.wikihow.com/Block-a-Website-in-Internet-Explorer-7
. To do this with
Firefox and browsers other
than IE, see
http://www.wikihow.com/Use-a-Hosts-File-in-Windows
. Some of this stuff is pretty deep
and not for the faint
of heart.
I think a lot of us would just like to leave
all this to the experts.
There are a number of ways to block
undesirable Web content
and filter out ads and popups. And there's
the simple way, and
that's letting a piece of software do it all
for you. One such
application is Ad Muncher. It's been
around now about 10 years, so you can expect
a fairly
well-polished
program. The Ad Muncher folks claim it is in
use "by millions"
and it's a quick download, just 491KB, and
compatible with just
about any operating system you may be
running: Windows
95/98/ME/NT4/2000/2003/XP/Vista/7. Once in
place, it
removes annoying popups, embedded
advertisements, and
other nuisances. It's configurable to run
the way you want it,
and it has a fast filtering engine. Ad
banners are replaced with
a "munched" text so that means Web sites are
most assuredly
going to load faster. Ad Muncher is
guaranteed to contain no
spyware or adware, so you're not replacing
one evil with
another evil.
For the skeptic, it's comforting to know that
Ad Muncher carries a
30-day guarantee with a full refund for any
reason you're not
satisfied.
You can read more
about Ad Muncher at
http://neatnettricks.admuncher.com , but
those are the nuts and bolts of it.
There are two "flavors" of Ad Muncher:
The Premium version offers a one-year
subscription to block
ads and popups, updates itself daily
(sometimes even more often) with
access to a
premium files list, and provides priority
technical support (you go to the head of the
line in the unlikely chance that you have a
problem). It's
priced at $29.95 Australian Dollars, but the
conversion rate
means you'll pay about $27 USD for this
version.
The Basic version offers a one-year
subscription to block ads
and popups, updates itself weekly, and
provides routine
technical support. It's bargain priced at
$19.95 Australian
Dollars, but the conversion rate means paying
about $18 USD
for this version. You can try all features
of this version free for up to 30
days. Download
this free full-featured trial version at
http://neatnettricks.admuncher.com/cgi-bin/download.pl/AM-Install.exe
.
In addition, you're given the option of
extending your
subscription during the checkout process.
But wait! (You KNEW there was more to
this
because you're a
Neat Net Tricks reader, right?) If you do
the following, you'll
get 20% off everything you order from Ad
Muncher, but only until May 10 if you:
Go to
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place your
order.
Enter the Promotion Code:
NeatNetTricks10 for the
discount.
Or, even easier, just
go to
http://www.admuncher.com/register.shtml?Coupon=NeatNetTricks10
and the code will already be entered for your
discount.
And say goodbye to yet another nuisance on
the Web!
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