Pop up eliminators

[Helevitia]

www.weather.com has a 'flash' pop up I believe. You may have to hit refresh a few times to see it. Is that what it is?

Dave

[Helevitia]

btw, what don't you like about zone alarm?

Dave

[Gurm]

Zone Alarm is... well... bad.

I personally hate software-based content-filtering.

If you do a search you can find all the reasons why ZA is terrible.

As for those flash pops, they're irritating enough to me - some of the forums I frequent use them fairly extensively. Opera won't block them either.

- Gurm

[Helevitia]

well, ZA has been extremely stable on my system except for one build about 9 months ago. It blocks pop ups, it blocks ports, it prevents unwanted cookies, it stops programs from using other programs to access the internet, it stops programs from using the internet, it stops mail bombs, prevents attachments from automatically opening in email, blocks on page ads, and all of these things are optional and you can tune it the way you like. Show me where this program is bad?

Dave

[Gurm]

It blocks programs from accessing the Internet.

That in and of itself sounds wonderful, but in reality it's a TCP-stack-meddling piece of turd.

"GOOD GOD! IEXPLORE.EXE IS TRYING TO GET TO THE INTERNET! WHAT SHOULD WE DO: ABORT, TERMINATE, OR DISALLOW?"

"Allow."

"ARE YOU SURE? IT'S TRYING TO GET TO THE INTERNET! ONLY VIRUSES WANT TO GET TO THE INTERNET! GOOD GOD MAN, THINK!"

"Allow."

"Ok, but I'll let you know next time..."

...
...

"IEXPLORE.EXE IS TRYING TO ACCESS THE INTERNET! MY GOD IT MUST BE A VIRUS!"

----------------

Add to this the fact that it's a total CPU hog, and that it kills network performance... and you have a recipe for ... POOP.

Seriously, do a search in here on software firewalls. We've been over all of this before. People end up in two camps - yours (the "look it does all this nifty stuff" camp) and mine (the "stop ****ing with my TCP stack and hogging my CPU you festering shit monkey" camp).

- Gurm

[Gurm]

Note Bene:

Opera 7.20 final DOES seem to block scripted flash-ads! Woo!

- Gurm

[gt40]

If Steve Gibson says use Zonealarm - I'm gonna use it. ----- on top of my hardware firewall

If you want to check out your systems vulnerability go here:

http://grc.com/default.htm

and use the Shields Up feature.

[bsdgeek]

Can you point to a site with these popups? I'm just curious to see if Firebird will catch them or not.

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by Gurm
It blocks programs from accessing the Internet.

That in and of itself sounds wonderful, but in reality it's a TCP-stack-meddling piece of turd.

"GOOD GOD! IEXPLORE.EXE IS TRYING TO GET TO THE INTERNET! WHAT SHOULD WE DO: ABORT, TERMINATE, OR DISALLOW?"

"Allow."

"ARE YOU SURE? IT'S TRYING TO GET TO THE INTERNET! ONLY VIRUSES WANT TO GET TO THE INTERNET! GOOD GOD MAN, THINK!"

"Allow."

"Ok, but I'll let you know next time..."

...
...

"IEXPLORE.EXE IS TRYING TO ACCESS THE INTERNET! MY GOD IT MUST BE A VIRUS!"

----------------

Add to this the fact that it's a total CPU hog, and that it kills network performance... and you have a recipe for ... POOP.

Seriously, do a search in here on software firewalls. We've been over all of this before. People end up in two camps - yours (the "look it does all this nifty stuff" camp) and mine (the "stop ****ing with my TCP stack and hogging my CPU you festering shit monkey" camp).

- Gurm

It must have been a long time since you used ZA Gurm because when you first install it, it gives you an option to start with IE and a couple other programs ready to go. Second, you can manually allow or disallow all programs from the start so if you want ot pain stakingly try to remember each program, component, and other things that access the TCP stack, then you can do it. Third, it is not CPU, memory, or bandwidth hog from everything I've seen. Fourth, I've seen all of the topics about ZA on this forum and everyone says the same thing which is not much.

Seriously, I'd check it out again, maybe you might like it Also, I play online games with it enabled.

Dave

[DentyCracker]

Gurm I second you on the ZA bit. I absolutely refuse to install that POS

[Helevitia]

Oh, I forgot to mention that ZA now has flash popup blocker built in as well.

Dave

[K6-III]

I just use Opera as well...

[Admiral]

ZA Pro does tend to lock the PC when there's too much traffic on my LAN. Only got this once on this machine but it was frequent enough on previous systems.

Using IE6 SP1 with Google toolbar and as of late Opera 7.20 to block popups.

[Gurm]

gt40,

You are aware that Steve Gibson is a fraud, yeah? He's been exposed as a complete fake about a dozen times over. His "shields up" and "nanoprobe" stuff is just simple HTTP requests, he's a total and utter fake and fraud.

Just so you know.

- Gurm

[spadnos]

Originally posted by Gurm
gt40,

You are aware that Steve Gibson is a fraud, yeah? He's been exposed as a complete fake about a dozen times over. His "shields up" and "nanoprobe" stuff is just simple HTTP requests, he's a total and utter fake and fraud.

Just so you know.

- Gurm

um - wrong.

Shields up is a port scanner - that's all. It just happens to have a more "friendly" (and sensationalist) user interface. It also provides an internet-connected computer to do the probing. Yes - he goes on and on about "Stealth Mode" and "Wide Open" ports - it makes him sound like an advertising exec.

To say that he's a total fraud - that's another thing entirely. He's not trying to sell anything with Shields up. If you look at his website, there are exactly two products for sale: SpinRite 5.0 and a set of books. SpinRite is probably the finest diagnostic tool ever written for the PC (though it is now outdated). He used to sell a screen saver, but that's no longer on the products page.

Basically, he's a smart guy who has written a bunch of utilities - some more useful than others - and gives most of them away for free.

Doesn't sound like a fraud to me.

- Steve