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How to defeat Internet advertising!

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Introduction

Pop-up ads, drop-down ads, and separate advertising panels can appear on Internet users' computers because of "scripts". In this context, scripts are small programs which are attached by the server to the requested page, and which then run in the background as the requested page is being displayed. When they run, they cause advertising material from Internet advertising sources to appear on the unsuspecting users' screens, invariably obliterating at least part of the page the user is attempting to read. Various web hosting companies use scripts to enable such uninvited, unwanted, and intrusive advertising, and in some cases those companies are believed to look either for information such as that presented here, or for technical devices ("anti-advertising scripts" for want of a better term) buried in the code of pages, and to delete such web sites that attempt to put up any form of defence.

These problems are not known to occur on web sites hosted by Freeserve, which is why this information is presented on this Freeserve hosted site.

These scripts or programs are rather like renegade DNA which gets into animal cells and causes diseases. In this respect, they behave like like low level viruses - not enough to get into and wreck the computer's operating system as do classic computer viruses, but enough to modify the display of the page which is being viewed at the time. A human being when infected by such a virus may come out in spots, whereas the "infected" computer comes out in advertisments. Once the called page is closed the ads usually disappear, so no long term harm is done (apart from raising the blood pressure of the user).

The scripts download with (or within) the called page, but will only run if "active scripting" is enabled, thus permitting the called page to take charge of the user's display and show whatever advertising the hosting company is contracted by it's advertisiers to send at the time. It follows that if active scripting can be disabled, the curse of uninvited Internet advertising can be defeated.

Luckily, active scripting can be disabled. The following instructions and illustrations refer specifically to Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6. For other versions of Internet Explorer or for alternative browsers, check your browser's help file for instructions for disabling active scripting.

Warning!

Disabling active scripting should get rid of uninvited advertising sent by the hosting company for the page(s) in question, but doing so may prevent other (non-advertising) pages from working properly if they have embedded scripts for purposes other than advertising. In view of this, after using a script-disabled computer to view a site in which advertising is known to be a problem, you may wish to re-enable active scripting so that those other pages will work properly. Or you could just leave it disabled until a problem crops up with a page from a non-advertising site, and re-enable it at that time. Your choice.

Instructions:

• Select "Tools" from the tool bar at the top of the screen

• From the drop-down menu, select "Internet Options". Click on the "Security" tab at the top of the Internet Options window. You should now see the following display:

• Ensure that "Internet" is selected from the 4 icons towards the top of the display as in the above picture, then click on "Custom Level". You should then see the security setting options as shown below. In the following picture, the page has been scrolled down almost to the bottom to show the main paragraph "Scripting". The first sub-paragraph is "Active scripting", and "Enable" will almost certainly be selected. Select instead "Disable".

• Click on "OK".

• You will see the message "Are you sure you want to change the security settings for this zone?". Click on "Yes".

• The display returns to the "Internet Options" page. Click on "OK"

• Your computer now has active scripting disabled.

• Remember that other non-advertising pages may not work properly with active scripting disabled. To reverse the change you have just made, follow the above instructions again, but click on "Enable" rather than "Disable".