About the annoying popup ads

Discussion in 'Feedback' started by pbm, Jun 13, 2001.

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  1. pbm

    pbm Administrator

    In viewing the HTML source for the popup ads referred to in this thread we found the following information:

    "This advertising banner is presented by a third-party advertising media agent company who is paid by X10.com. Viewing is a result of a visit to participating web sites and presented as a popup or pop-under banner. To prevent further banners from X10.com for 30 days, go to http://www.x10.com/x10ads.htm and click on 'click here' under the 'turn off banners' question. Thank you."

    In other words, x10 gives users the option of disabling the popups for 30 days only, similar to shareware. The difference is that shareware is software you choose to use and are free to remove from your computer at any time. These popups, on the other hand, are unsolicited ads and users are given neither how-to instructions nor an option to disable x10 popups permanently.

    To put it in perspective, imagine that every 15th time you turned off your television it would force an ad upon you. Now imagine that you had to call a number every 30 days to disable this ad trigger, and that you did not have the option to disable it permanently unless you resorted to disabling certain functions on your television which would impair your viewing of other channels with certainty.

    You paid for your computer. You're paying for your bandwidth. You should have a right to control the content.

    What can I do?

    Glad you asked.

    First off, if your browser allows you to view active cookies on your machine, you can delete the x10-specific ones (there should be about five of them.) That will suppress these ads from popping up until you visit a site again that employs x10 interstitials, which is very likely to happen.

    Alternatively, you can choose to not accept cookies. This would prevent x10-ad servers from setting a cookie on your machine, and thus suppress the popups. However, cookies are used across the Internet for a myriad of reasons including saving site preferences and shopping carts. Disabling them would break functionality across other sites that depend on them for custom service.

    This board, for example, uses cookies to track which messages you have read. If it didn't, your message indicators would not indicate the correct status of read vs. unread. Likewise, you would find it nearly impossible to shop online without the use of cookies.

    Another option is to visit the URL x10 provides and disable their popups for a period of 30 days. Once that time is up, the popups will reappear and you will have to disable them again.

    Your last option, which is the one I advocate, is to visit Planetfeedback and submit a complaint. While Creditnet obviously supports the use of advertisements, we do not blindly endorse any means thereof, particularly where they appear to violate some form of privacy.

    x10 Contact Information

    X10 Wireless Technology, Inc.
    Jim Phillips, JIM@X10.COM
    15200 52nd Ave S
    Seattle, WA 98188
    http://www.x10.com
    206.241.3283 | t
    206.242.4644 | f


    Sincerely,
    pbm

    Disclaimer: Views expressed herein are the express views of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Creditnet and its other employees.
     
  2. bbauer

    bbauer Banned

    PBM.

    I recently suggested a freeware program called POWI.exe which knocks down those popup ads every time they show up but does not affect cookies in anyway. I posted the address where our readers could download it for free too, so their total cost is exactly zero.

    There is also another one out there which I use called cookiewall.exe. It's freeware too, but I've not gotten around to actually putting it up for free download. Can't seem to find the source file right now. It's off buried on one of my computers disk drives. Since I use SCSI in all my computers, I have an awful lot of big hard drives to go through, so even if I made it a priority project to find it, it could take up some major time to come up with it.

    What do you think of those programs as compared to the solutions you suggest?
     
  3. Twen0

    Twen0 Active Member

  4. tom65432

    tom65432 Well-Known Member

    Thanks. I will try one. These things are annoying
     
  5. pbm

    pbm Administrator

    I think those are excellent suggestions, but they treat the symptom only, not the cause. :)

    -pbm
     
  6. Crdt Dfnse

    Crdt Dfnse Well-Known Member

    Just A Heads Up

    PBM:
    FYI for anyone using Norton System Worksâ?¦ I remove cookies using the â??clean sweepâ? feature, POOF, theyâ??re gone in a flash and no more pop-ups! [;-)
     
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