COMPUTERS #1

Canada bashing is unfair and irrational. STOP IT! I for one am taking my tourist dollars to Toronto in a few weeks to see Metallica and NOT catch SARS. Twenty thousand Americans drop dead of the flu every year. Hundreds of thousands more dies from tobacco, liquor, gun, and automobile related causes - deaths which would be almost fully eliminated if the large corporations that run those businesses actually cared about the health of their customers rather than the bottom line. Yet a few dozen people get sick in Toronto and it's worldwide panic.

Another thing that really irks me are these terrorist web sites that hijack your computer and cause no end of grief. I'm talking of course not only of pop-up banner ads, but of these sites that create an endless chain of browser windows. In the past few months, my friends and neighbours have all complained to me of increasing occurrences of pop-up ads and of these various computer hijacking schemes. Just the other day I myself was victim of such a site, when I inadvertently mistyped one letter of a well known web site, only to get some malicious web site which then kept popping up window after window after window of ads. I literally had to reboot my computer to make it stop.

I personally feel that these malicious actions should be illegal, for anyone who seizes control of my computer against my will is a terrorist. A pop-up banner is no more desirable than a computer virus. The law goes after people who write viruses, it goes after spammers, so why do we allow these other bozos to run free? To make matters worse, legitimate web sites support these cyber-terrorists by selling them ad space in the first place. How to protect yourself?

Back in November 2001 I posted to this web page some tips about stopping computer viruses, and if you haven't read it, I highly encourage you to read it. During the 18 months since, broadband usage (i.e. DSL and cable modem usage) has increased, and so have these virus and banner ad attacks. The very same tips I give about stopping viruses do in fact help stop these banner ads. You need to take action to stop the viruses from invading your computer in the first place, not just run a virus checker as most people do. Running a virus checker is not effective because by the time you get warned of a virus it's generally too late - the virus has penetrated your defenses and you can cross your fingers hoping your anti-virus software was up-to-date enough to eradicate the virus.

The trick is to stop the virus (and by virus I'm including these unwanted browser hijacks and banner ads) before it reaches your computer. The easiest way to do that again is to set your browser's security settings to High. i.e. by default all web sites are treated with high security, meaning no Javascript or ActiveX controls can execute. To do this in Internet Explorer, click on Tools \ Internet Options \ Security. Click on the Internet icon, which represents the default settings for all web sites, and click on the Custom Level button. Select the High option and click Reset. Congratulations. You have just blocked a major cause of future attacks against your computer.

There are of course web sites that you'll need to give permissions to run Javascript or ActiveX, to download files, etc. To do this, click on the Trusted Sites icon, the click the Sites... button, and manually enter the domain names of web sites you trust, such as dell.com, emulators.com, google.com, etc.

You may find that this approach is too restrictive though, as you may end up typing in dozens of domains into your Trusted Sites list and then still run across sites that you've inadvertently blocked and need to add. So a modified approach is to set your Internet security not to High, but to Medium. This will by default allow most web sites to run properly, and ones that don't can still be added to the Trusted Sites list later.

In the Medium security setting mode, banner ads will get through. So what you need to do is add domains that you wish to block to the Restricted Sites list. Probably the most annoying and widespread use of banner ads was pioneered by the company X10, so the very first thing I do when get on any new computer is to make sure that x10.com is on the Restricted Sites list. Other domains that exist for no good reason other than to bombard you with banner ads are doubleclick.net, mediaplex.com, and specificpop.com, to name a few.

Going the Medium security approach won't protect you against against what happened to me - mistyping a domain name. These immoral bastards that lurk at domain names similar to the names of popular sites rely on the fact that once in a while somebody will type the wrong letter into a URL and end up at their site. And due to the randomness of this they know that you're a one time visitor and that they need to get your attention in a big way. They do that by preventing you from closing your browser. You close the window, boom, another window pops up and assaults you with another ad. Close that window and another pops up.

When this happens, DON'T PANIC, as this is also your chance to nail these bastards so that they don't bother you again. Every attack window that pops up, look at the address line to see the domain address. Some times you'll x10.com in the address, other times some other site. Write down the domain address of that banner ad. Then close the window and allow the next one to pop up. If the banner ad is clever, it will hide the address line. In that case, right click on the banner ad and select Properties. This will give you the correct domain address most of the time.

When you've gathered enough of these, disconnect your Internet connection and reboot your computer. Now boot up the browser, go into the Security tab again, and enter all these sons of bitches into the Restricted Sites list. Run a virus check if you so choose. And only then reconnect your Internet connection.

This has worked wonderfully for me once I gathered the list. It still of course does not protect you against the occasional mistyped URL, so I suggest taking the first approach - setting your default browser security settings to High - as the safer bet.

Another thing you can do, as has been suggested by numerous reader emails, is to use the Google Toolbar. You have to give up some of your privacy, but it does work at blocking at pop-up ads.

Blocking web sites using hardware

There is another approach which works even better in situations where you have a number of computers all sharing the same Internet connection. Such as a small home network for example. Chances are if you have two or more PCs sharing a DSL or cable modem connection you're using some kind of hub or router to share the one Internet connection with your multiple computers. It can get tedious to try to protect each computer individually. The answer is to use the router itself, the little blue box that sits between your DSL/cable modem and your computers.

Some of these little blue boxes, such as the Netgear RT314 Gateway Router that I have (or the newer model, the Netgear MR314 which adds a wireless hub) have a wonderful feature where you can enter your Restricted Sites list into the router's memory and have it block the web site from ever reaching your computer! This is a great brute force approach to not only protect your computer but any computer that connects to your Internet connection. For example, someone surfing your wireless hotspot, or a friend who comes over and taps their laptop into your network.

On the Netgear boxes, log into the administration menu (which is usually at address 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1) and choose the Advanced menu. Click on Content Filter, and then click on Keyword. Now type in all of the offending domain names, starting first and foremost with x10.com.

Now when you accidentally hit one of these offending web sites, such as when a legitimately trusted web site decides to pop up a link to one of these bozo banner ads, you'll get this kind of pop-up:

Close that one window and you don't worry that more windows will pop up.

The Netgear box also gives you a list of ALL domains that were surfed by your home networks. So for example when your friends brings over a laptop that has low security settings and gets the endless pop-ups, you no longer have to look up the domain addresses by hand. The Netgear router gives you a nice long list of domain addresses, and anything that looks suspicious you then add to the Content Filter list.

You can protect yourself so that any one particular web site can only screw you over once and with minimal damage. Now if the lawmakers got their heads out of the desert sand long enough, they'd make all banner ads illegal in the first and save millions of people the daily grief that this cyber-terrorism causes.