Ads that get into your computer and change your homepage should be illegal, but more importantly shouldn't be attached to this site. The amount of pop-up and intrussive advertising on this site far exceedes just about any other site I know, and when you are going around, looking and people's solutions and opening new pages, you easily end up with fifteen or twenty pages of ads in the background (some of which try to change your homepage...).

I realise that you put a lot of effort into this site, and the rest of us are getting it for free, so obviously you need some sort of revenue to make it worth your while. I just wonder if we can think of something that's less intrusive that fifteen pages worth of pop-ups. Perhaps individual ads would pay more if a single ad was shown for five seconds before you get to the solution page, or something.

Let me put in a vote too.
This is a great site and very well run.
I love it, but one particular add (the one that changes the home page to one with inappropriate images) has made me seriously consider not coming back.
Its not that I'm a prude but I, like many others, check the site on my lunch break at work and inaapropriate images could get me in deep trouble.
I'll say it again, this is a great site and I know that there is no free lunch but if it is at all possible to avoid that specific type of advertising I'd be very grateful.

If you have trouble with your home page, set it to one of your favorites. Then, whenever the home page changes, hold down the mouse on the link on your favorites menu and drag your original home page to the home page icon. This is an easy way to fix it, but it doesn't get rid of the ads. The homepage changing ads don't come up often, at least not to me.

If you're logged on to Flooble, less pop-ups appear (or so I heard from a thread at the bottom of the general forum). I think the pop-ups can be annoying, but what's more annoying is that lottery ad that sometimes appears and makes music, and it's not a pop-up I can just close.

Tristan,
you are the MAN!!
Seriously, thanks your tip will save me tons of hassle in the future. I never realized that I had become one of those old guys who couldn't figure out the basic shortcuts but I guess I am.

To Everyone,
Have you started to get a little pop-up that is labled something like "data protection" It looks like a fairly convincing windows dialog box and it asks for your windows password.

I just wanted to know if this is another advertising thing or if it means my IT people have jsut installed something new on my system.

Hmmm... That's not good - I will try to look over the ads served on this site and make sure nothing that intrusive is getting through.

In all, as the site gets more traffic I am hoping to be able to show more high quality ads instead of that sort of junk.

It's unfortunate that this type of advertising is neccessary to provide free sites nowadays.

Levik,
I don't know the specific ad but the home page it re-directs me to is called something along the lines of "pass this On"
The page itself is often deceptive: sometimes it offers adult photos (annoying but not that scary as it is easy to recognize and get rid of) and the scarier message that say something like: click here to get an important security bulletin. (MOre scary since I might actually press a button for security info(although I as yet have not been fooled))

Unfortunately the reality of todays internet marketplace is such that I cannot employ a sales force to actively seek out people to buy that type of ad on my site, so no high-enough quality ads of this type are available.

For full disclosure, one company does offer them, but they don't let me customize the ad pages, which make it impossible to make them look like they're part of the site. I am afraid that as a result, people would leave thinking they clicked on the wrong link or something.

Thanks fotr the tip _ will look into it. The problem is that there are a few networks rotating ads on the server, so figuring out which one it is to shut it down won't be the easiest thing in the world. But I will try.

The problem is, as I said, that I don't deal with advertisers directly. I join "networks" which act as intermediaries between web publishers such as myself, and people who want to buy ad space. These networks get new advertisers all the time which I do not get to approve. I can assure you I have not added any new advertiser or network in well over a year, so the problem most likely lies with a bad apple advertiser joining one of these places.

Now generally, networks themselves have policies against the types of ads you speak of, but unfortunately, they are not always able to enforce them with sufficient success... If the offender is tracked down and reported, they generally cancel their account.

I have added some debug code to the bottom of every page, which details what popup network gets called. I have run through the site a couple of times myself without getting hit with anything too difficult to close, objectionable or any type of installer. However, if you run into them, I would greatly appreciate it if you could just scroll to the bottom of the page and let me know what it says there for "Last Ad" and "This Ad". This will allow me to figure out which network the offenders are coming from so that I could take the issue up with their management.

I also increased the effectiveness of cookies that ensure that you should not see repeat popups too many times - this is something I should have done a long time ago, and was actually sure that I *HAD* done it. Ah, the blissful ignorance of browsing with Firebird...

You could be seeing the effects of the cookies, or potentially the networks cracked down on the offenders. Most likely it's a combination of the two factors.

Levik,
I just got the offending popup and it changed my homepage
on the bottom of my flooble screen where you put teh telltales is says
LastAd:ExitFuel This Ad:FastClick
I am not 100% sure but I think that ExitFuel is an ad I have seen listed when I have ahd other problems.

I hope that this helps.
Keep fughting the good fight

Sorry that I have neglected this thread for a while...

Greg, the unfortunate truth is that even were I able to have 10 paid banners on this page (which no advertiser would agree to in the first place), they would still not bring in as much money as a single popup. The advertising market is pretty bad right now, and people dislike paying money unless they make it.

I would like to see a count of hands of people who have clicked on a banner on this site, and went and bought something as a result.

As far as Exitfuel goes, I *AM* seeing a lot of problem ads from them lately, and while they do end up removing them, they do so slower than I'd like. Over the next few months, I will be looking into wether or not running their ads is worth the trouble.

I will reiterate that if you are kept logged in to the site, you should be seeing *significantly* less popups - I don't want to annoy the people that help make the site a good place to be.

I agree with (and do) what Cory said.

Cory - the beauty of pops is that the advertiser pays for each one that was loaded. Even if it was never actually the top window on your screen, the advertiser will pay out the cost of the impression. So they are kind of there for the webmasters whose visitors never buy anything :)

Though of course the ad company's thinking is that if they barrage you with ads, sooner or later you'll end up buying, and I prefer not to argue with them on that.

I *am* a bit discomforted by the amount of ads you guys say you are seeing - as I said, I try to minimize the advertisement shown to logged in users. Are you really getting hit that much even when logged in? If so, this is something I need to work on.

I don't really care. Once I get in the habit of clicking, It's good. Sometimes I get a laugh from the way they market these. For example

Get your free DVD player! Just click here! (OF COURSE it's not that easy)

(after clicking here there or anywhere, it doesn't matter) Just type in your name here! And your Address! And your e-mail address! And your first grade teacher's maiden name! And your third cousin twice removed's favorite gerund!

One thing I have on my computer is pop-up blocker. Quality control at its very BEST. Any and every pop-up is closed. if pop-up blocker blocks a popup you want to open you just hold control and click again. Trust me.

I downloaded a dedicated pop-up blocker, but hated it because I couldn;t even try to open pages in a new window without it blocking them. I'm now using the Google Toolbar, however, which works much better.

At what point does the block occur? Do the ads know that they've been blocked? Does Levik still get money from them even if they've been blocked? My guess is unfortunately no, but it would be nice were it so.

with mozilla if you try to open in new window it allows you to. and even bettter you can open new window in a tab and it wont open a window but will put a tab that you click on. It is an excellent feature

I've recently downloaded the new Google toolbar 2.0 which has a built in pop up blocker. I've never used blocker software to compare it to, but it works fine for me. It also has a google search bar, and an autofill feature for web forms.

Levik, what did you think about the "donation" idea I posted earlier? Also, what do the rest of you think? Would you be willing to donate $5 or $10 to help cover the cost of this site (and perhaps to help reduce the pop-ups)?

Of course one of the best factors of this site would be its freeness. I think I would just do a "flooble deluxe" plan, where the only perk you get from subscribing is to get rid of ads for while you are subscribed.

Yes i am poor and i have no money i dont have the money to subscribe i would apretiate it if the site could remain free. I am not sure what other people will do but if the site begins charging i would leave

I've received a "Trojan Program Found" warning several times from my Virus Shield when this site opens pop ups. I'm not sure if this is the same one as I've had in the past, but here is the latest one:

Downloaded File: INDEX[1].HTM
Trojan Name: VBS/Psyme

Last Ad: ExitFuel; This Ad: PopUpTraffic (under)

About four pop ups opened, though, so I can't swear it was either of these two ads.


On a related note, about one time out of three when browsing this site without being logged in a pop up tries to load that takes so long it freezes everything, forcing me to Ctrl-Alt-Del my way out of Perplexus. Currently the computer beside me is frozen (I'm in a computer lab), and is trying to load an ad from media.fastclick.net. This happens quite regularly, on a number of different (fast) computers, and seems to happen whether or not a pop up blocker is installed.

Update:

My computer at home undortunately does not have a virus shield that catches evil pop up trojans being downloaded, hijacking my homepage and installing spyware on my computer. I have Norton antivirus, a ZoneAlarm firewall and Google's pop up blocker, but that I guess isn't good enough.

This past week I've found a very clear correlation between visiting Perplexus and having my homepage hijacked to http://default-homepage-network.com, an evil site that advises you to download their Spyware remover (Ha! That's like the thief stopping half way through robbing your house and suggesting you buy his burglar alarm...). My own Spyware program, Ad-Aware, finds thirty-odd new malicious programs everytime this happens.

I know perfectly well that the net these days is no place to be walking around without adequate protection. I also know that it's almost impossible to control what comes in through pop-ups, especially when they're run by a third party, so I doubt that it would be possible to stop this from happening (these trojans are all over the web, Perplexus isn't alone in any way). I'm just thinking that maybe we should revitalize the old idea putforward above somewhere above that, for instance, donation = no ads, or some such similar possiblity.


In the meantime, until I start wearing proper protection at home I'll be visiting Perplexus from the safty of the Virus-Shielded lab computers. Also, I'd suggest that anyone who frequents sites with a lot of pop ups downloads and regularly uses a reputable Spyware remover.

A number of you have expressed interest in donating to remove ads. In trying to figure out how feasible that would be, I'd like to know if you would want the pops to disappear, or the banners/skyscrapers as well.

Personally, I don't really notice them, and believe the pages would look naked/ugly without the ad "trimming", but I understand others may be of a different opinion.

Clearly removing just the pops would be cheaper than getting rid of everything so I'd like to know what you think. $10/year for no pops? (You'd have to be logged in though)

Personally, they look better without the "trimming", that's why I size the window horizontally to get rid of the "skyscrapers" (I guess that's what you're calling the ad at the right), and scroll down to hide the banners. And yes $10/year would be worthwhile to eliminate the pop-ups.

Regarding logging in, I notice sometimes the site forgets me. I then relog in with the "remember me" checked, and that lasts for days/weeks, but some day or other, I get flooded with pop-ups and find I'm not logged on, and have to re-log on again.

I'm afraid that the VBS/Psyme trojan is still around (actually, I think it might only started appearing again yesterday). I've received about five trojan warning today.

Last Ad: FastClick; This Ad: MultiPop

And the popup that I think tried to send it this last time:

http://64.27.100.65/scripts/popup.php?hid=557a297af0fa7f4ff41e&tmpl=peelPB.tmpl

I've finally gotten around to donating, though, so hopefully they'll be a thing of the past.

I know FastClick was promoting an ad that gave the popup yes/no window if you merely held your mouse over a certain spot; I think that is annoying :)

The problem I have is I move my mouse over there, and have to move it down to click cancel; it is just a big burden, and mouseovers shouldn't be in ads anyway if they do anything outside the ad.