Popup Ads and Immunity

Hello all,

I’ve got a couple things to cover about popup ads today. First, we’ve had reports from a few of our OD members that they are seeing popup ads when they come to OD, even though OD is not supposed to have any advertising. Let me assure everybody – there is no ad code on any page of the new OD, so any ads you do see are coming from elsewhere.

But where would they be coming from (I hear you saying)? Well, there are a couple of possibilities.

The first possibility is that the popup may be a so-called “exit ad”. An exit ad is a popup that is designed to come up as you leave the website running the ad. However, the load of the ad is often delayed a few seconds, making it appear that the ad is coming from the site that you went to. If you are leaving another site and coming to OD when you see a popup, it may be that it came as an exit ad from the site you left.

The second possibility is somewhat more insidious. There are programs now called “spyware”, which have been developed by companies that want to deliver ads to you while you’re on the Internet. Spyware is a program that may be included in something you download (like a free screensaver or file-sharing program) that installs itself on your computer, and then serves you popup ads when it detects that you are surfing the web. These programs are often installed without your knowledge, and there is a lot of controversy about their use. Rest assured that we at OD would never use spyware to serve ads, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t have gotten it from someplace else. For more information about this, you may want to read this article at Wired magazine. It explains spyware a little better. In any case, if you are seeing popup ads when you don’t think you should, you may want to investigate whether there is one of these programs on your computer. There are several programs available on the web that will find spyware and remove it from your system.

Finally, some good news. One of our OD members wrote to me, and said (I’m paraphrasing here), “you know, we pay a subscription fee to be free of ads here, but when I go to Free OD I’m still bombarded by popup ads. Wouldn’t it be nice if FOD could be smart enough to know that I am a paying user, and turn the ads off?”

Well, it was a little bit of work, but we’ve done just that. As an OD member, you should no longer see popup ads when you visit Free OD. However, this will only work if you login at Free OD with your OD name, by clicking the “OD users login” prompt on the left side of the front page of Free OD. This is the only way that the site will know that you’re an OD member, so if you don’t do that you will see ads as you always do.

Enjoy your popup immunity!