Pop-ups and pop-unders
Pop-ups are a phenomenon which exist since advertising on the web became popular. Pop-unders are a variety on pop-ups and work, surprise, the opposite way pop-ups do in the remainder of this article when I refer to pop-ups the same applies to pop-unders.. A pop-up is a windows which will be loaded when visiting a certain page or, when infected with adware, will popup when you start your browser. Most pop-ups appear in the centre of your screen to daw the most attention and contain:
- Text, images or bot
- An offer/statement too good to be true, like 'you're the 1.000.000 visitor to our site, click here for your prize'
- Or some sort of triviagame which is rdiciulously easy, it's not about the game, it's about you clicking anywhere in the pop-up to be taken to the advertiser.
- Flashing/ annoying, almost screaming images, texts and colors crying for your attention
Because a pop-up can contain commands which influecne your browser they can be annoying, the pop-ups resizes the ad to full screen or removing your adress bar. Some pop-ups use malicious code to install 'goodies' on your system like spy- or adware and most of them plant a cookie.
Pop-unders are like pop-ups but, instead of appaearing 'above' the site your browsing, they appear below your browser windows so they'll 'appear' after you close the browser.
To prevent pop-ups and pop-unders configure your webbrowser or get a popup blocker.