Popup windows are a type of online advertising. The purpose of the pop-up is to increase traffic to a website and to capture email addresses without knowledge from the person who is browsing the website.

Advertising supported websites make up most of the pop-up users. They take advantage of internet users who have less experience in dealing with internet advertisements. Popup windows are the windows which appear when website browsers open a new web browser to display various contents such as advertisements.

The pop-up window is often generated by Javascript, but can also be generated by other means. Some of the new popups are created using Flash which contains animations, and others are created using DHTML.

Many internet advertisers love pop-up ads because of they are hard to ignore, they appear first before the main browser window. Popups are also loved for their high click rate. It is also shown by recent studies that the click-rate of popup ads is twice as that of the banner ads.

Among the top users of popup ads are porn websites. Not only do these popups advertise the adult content, they also set off multiple windows. As the user closes a window another window appears, initiating another set of windows, and sometimes this happens indefinitely. Users call this “java trap”, or “spam cascade”. There are, however, processes which can produce popup windows such as spyware programs.

“Mousetrapping”, one variation of popup, fills the screen with its content, removing the menu bars and other features which prevents the user from closing the window.

Another is called the pop-under advertisement. In a new browser window the pop-up is opened behind the active window. Pop-unders are less annoying, but are only seen when the main browser window is closed, which makes it difficult to find out which website opened them.

Internet browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, America Online, Camino, Opera, and Safari, are providing features to block popups. Additional programs to block popups and spyware are also available.

Don’t Be A Chump,
Arhtur Browning