Man Vs Pop-Up Ad.

It’s not often something will annoy the hell out of me and give me a cheap laugh at the same time. But this certain pop-up ad I’ve been seeing more and more lately does. Most pop-up ads, you just click the red cross in the corner of the page and send them hurtling back into the cyberspace void they came from. But these ones are trickier… once you try and close them, a little window pops up stopping you leaving or worse, telling you it’s your own computer scanning for viruses when really it’s installing something nasty on your computer. So you quickly try and shut the page down only to get given another pop-up and an option that can only be described as bullshit. “Press OK to continue, or cancel to stay on current page.” Confusing, patronizing and outrageous all at the same time. Someone is not only trying to mess up your computer, but also has now insulted your intelligence. If you’re lucky you’ll be able to quickly navigate away by hitting the back button. Or failing that, just close down the whole page.

The next ad should simply read: “If you would NOT like us to empty your bank account, please fill in your bank account details below. Failure to do so will result in us withdrawing all of your money.”

I read on Wiki (and therefore it must be true) that if you hold down the ‘Ctrl’ key, it stops pop-ups. If this turns out to be a fact then I might buy a tiny G-Clamp and have my Ctrl button permanently pressed down when I’m browsing from now on. That’s how a real man would deal with this situation. There isn’t many problems in life that can’t be solved by a tiny G-Clamp.