Ah, popups. The satan spawn of advertising and computers.

First off, run Spybot Search and Destroy. It's free.

Secondly, get Lavasoft's "Ad-aware." It's free, too. You can find
where to get both of these from a Google search; I'd offer an URL for
Spybot, but they seem to have moved around a bit thanks to DDOS attacks
from the spyware and spammer consortium. Ad-aware comes from Lavasoft, at:

http://www.lavasoftusa.com

That'll get rid of your problem- spyware like Gator or something
similar is to blame almost without doubt.

Now- once you get rid of the crap, keep it out- use the
"vaccinate" feature on Spybot. Once you do THAT, download Mozilla
Firefox- far more bulletproof than IE, but looks and feels just like it.
I ditched IE months ago, and never looked back.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox

I'm still playing with Mozilla Thunderbird (the mail reader); I
can't quite get the spam filtering to work for me using Thunderbird. Most
people have great success right off the bat- but not me. Unfortunately, I
use Cox.net which *charges* extra for spam filtering. Suxor.

Once you get Firefox up and running, clamp down on it- Tools
Options Cookies, and then "Enable cookies," BUT- make sure to select "for
the current session only," and "but ask before accepting." They're not
paying you- why should advertisers get their information for free? You'll
be amazed at how many sites try to put cookies on your computer. Some you
want- most you don't need. Keep off the ones you don't.

I can't say enough good things about Firefox. It has built-in
popup blocking (seamless!), you can right-click to block ads from a given
source, and there are plug-ins such as "flash click to play" so that when
flash animations come up, there's just a little bar that says "flash
[[Click to play]]" so that you don't have distracting video while you're
trying to read the article.

Yay.

The e-mail address in this header is a spam trap that goes
straight to the FTC. Don't send e-mail there.

-AJHicks
The Orchid Seedbank
Chandler, AZ