Popups not blocked

From MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Revision as of 03:01, 7 August 2006 by Alice Wyman (talk | contribs) (→‎Other privacy and security software: great find on McAfee Privacy Service, just needed some polishing)
Jump to navigationJump to search

Mozilla browsers will block most pop-up and pop-under advertisements by default. (These are regarded as the same thing in this article.) If you are getting unwanted popups, try the following suggestions.

First steps

Your first step should be to make sure that the internal popup blocker is enabled in your browser and that you haven't "whitelisted" the sites that are giving you popups:

  • Firefox: "Tools -> Options -> Content (Web Features in Firefox 1.0.x)". Make sure the box "Block Popup Windows" is checkmarked. Click the "Allowed Sites" button to review the sites where popups are allowed and remove unwanted sites from the list.
  • Mozilla Suite and SeaMonkey: "Edit -> Preferences -> Privacy and Security -> Popup Windows". Make sure "Block unrequested popup windows" is checked. Review the "Allowed Sites" list as above.

JavaScript

Some popups opened through JavaScript are beyond the realm of the internal blocker [1] (at least for now). Such popups can be prevented by disabling JavaScript completely within the browser, but this will prevent many sites from functioning correctly. Instead, you may use an extension to block these popups.

Conventional popups

Conventional popups can be blocked using the Popup Blocker Settings extension. (The "Block all" setting will block legitimate and unwanted popups alike. You can allow sites to show popups by entering them in "Allowed Sites".)

Alternatively, you can use the NoScript extension to allow only certain sites to use JavaScript, or the Adblock extension with filters applied.

Hover ads

Hover ads are a special form of popup that cannot be blocked by using the Popup Blocker Settings extension. You can use either NoScript or Adblock to prevent them.

Popups generated by other software

Sometimes other software that has nothing directly to do with Mozilla browsers can cause windows to pop up. Sources of such non-browser popups include the following:

Spyware on Windows

Popups may be caused by spyware, a collective term for a type of malicious software that gathers information about the user. Spyware mainly affects Windows users and can be installed without your knowledge. Some recommended free spyware detectors and cleaners include:

Messenger Service on Windows

In their initial state, Windows NT, 2000 and XP SP1 allow anyone on the Internet to initiate pop-up messages on your screen via the built-in Messenger Service (not to be confused with the Windows Messenger or MSN Messenger instant messaging clients). The title of these popups is always "Messenger Service". It is recommended that you disable this service. (This service is disabled by default in Windows XP SP2.)

Other privacy and security software

The McAfee Privacy Service software is reported to disable your Mozilla browser's pop-up blocker, even that software is uninstalled and you re-check the popup blocker option in your Mozilla browser. This happens because McAfee's software sets the related preference "dom.disable_open_during_load" to "false" via the user.js file and the popup blocker option again becomes disabled when you next restart the browser [2]. To fix this, exit your Mozilla application, open the profile folder and, if you find a user.js file, either delete the file if it contains no other settings or edit the contents to remove the preference line containing "dom.disable_open_during_load". This will allow you to re-check the popup blocker option when you restart your Mozilla browser.

Firefox 1.0.x and Mozilla Suite considerations

Popups from plugins

Firefox 1.5 and SeaMonkey block popups from plugins (such as Flash) by default. You can enable this "hidden preference" to disable popups from plugins in Firefox 1.0.x and Mozilla Suite by creating the new integer preference privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins and setting its value to 2.

See the article privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins for additional information.

Error alert popups

It is possible to block "error alert popups" (such as "The operation timed out..." and "The document contains no data") in Firefox 1.0.x or Mozilla Suite, and replace them with error pages. To do this you should set the preference browser.xul.error_pages.enabled to true. (This is the default setting in Firefox 1.5 and SeaMonkey.)


Related preferences

External links

  • [3]. Visit this site to test your popup blocker.