FTC Shuts Down 'Pop-Up Trapping' Sites 442
Masem writes: "The FTC today ordered the shutdown of 5,500 sites owned by John Zuccarini, all of them the so-called 'typo' sites that common mis-entered URLs for popular sites (such as Annakurnikova.com); when the user visits these sites, their back button behavior in most popular browsers is modified as to open multiple pop-ups featuring ads for adult entertainment and gambling sites when pressed, and uses other technology to basically 'trap' the browser until the entire application has to be closed. While some sites are still operating, the FTC is going to take this matter to court, which may decide exactly how much control a web site can take over the end browser using JavaScript and ActiveX. CNet has the full story." Le Marteau contributes a link to the same story at the Washington Post.
The FTC regulates trade (Score:5, Informative)
The government isn't "getting involved in the internet" in any new creative way. They are just protecting consumers (us) from fraudulent illegal business practices
Next time get the FCC FTC thing correct before you post, it completely changes the context of the article.
unauthorised javascript (Score:5, Informative)
looking for a bug in some Javascript (we maintain
our own web browser), and after delving down
through the deliberately obfuscated javascript
code, it became obvious what it was trying to do:
it went through all links in the document, attaching
a javascript "front-end" to each link that did an http GET request
informing the remote site what had been clicked on,
before actually following the link. the technique
used seemed fairly dodgy (the request was purporting
to be for a non-displayed image), but it's interesting
to see what a fairly reputable site is prepared
to do in order to get as much information off you as possible (without your knowledge).
how reasonable is that? i don't like it, but is that sort
of subterfuge the kind of thing we'd like to stop too?
[PS. apologies if this appears twice - it looked like
had rejected the previous ones; and then the whole
server seemed to crash: what was going on there then?]
Re:5500 Sites! Curious. (Score:4, Informative)
The site www.annakurnikova.com is running Apache/1.3.6 - 448 user - IKM 11211999 (Unix) on FreeBSD.
They go on to say the netblock he is using belongs to CWIE LLC.
Re:I'm happy, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Really? [google.com]
(and you really can't blame the last 2, they're implementing things to take care of this junk).
I don't know about Konq, because its authors chose not to release a version that runs on my platform of choice, but Mozilla doesn't yet ship to block pop-up advertisements (or even "hydras", the most annoying type) by default. It has a hidden pref [google.com] to disable the window.open() function while a page is loading or unloading, which should become a visible pref once bugs are worked out. I hope the pref is eventually turned on by default, at least for the case of hydras.
Stupid (Score:1, Informative)
I doubt you will ever see this sort of feature in a non-Free browser, because corporate interests would not permit them to add it. Microsoft probably owns some of the sites that annoy us with pop-ups. Think about it.
Re:Fix this At Browser (Score:4, Informative)
You can get some documentation on Mozilla's configurable security policies here [mozilla.org], and you can also test the new hidden pref to prevent web pages from opening new windows while they are loading or while the user is leaving the page [google.com]. Note that the new hidden pref is still buggy: it catches some things it shouldn't, such as clicking a javascript: link in a page while the page is still loading [mozilla.org], and fails to catch cases like onmouseover and onfocus.
Pay attention! (Score:3, Informative)
An easy way out of this for IE and Moz (Score:4, Informative)
When you backclick or close, the next site(s) will attempt to pop up, but no further code will be loaded and hence the hell will eventually end.
I always click "work offline" before trying to exit or back out of any of these questionable sites now BEFORE the cascading crap starts...
New Browser Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The FTC, not the FCC ... (Score:3, Informative)
Welcome to the ephemeral web, I guess. I wish the editor would at least *tell* us that he is changing history, otherwise taniwha's post makes little sense.
OmniWeb for OS X fixes this elegantly (Score:2, Informative)
"Allow Pop-Up Windows Only When Link is Clicked On" (or something similar)
Which means, it'll only pop up a window if and only if you click on something deliberately.
Nice. Very, very nice.
If you use Mac use iCab/OmniWeb (Score:2, Informative)
access the referer
open new windows
move windows
touch the toolbar
write in the status line
create cookies
ask for cookies
access history
etc
You can prevent them from doing it with the click of a button. You can apply the settings to all web pages and choose sites where the filters won't be applied.
You can even decide what type of Javascript will be executed by turning on/off:
JavaScript 1.0
JavaScript 1.1
JavaScript 1.2
JavaScript 1.3
JavaScript 1.4
JavaScript 1.5
JScript
among many, many other things
It must be one of the most configurable browsers out there.
For general browsing it's extremely fast, small and flexible and cannot be beat at saving web archives. One word of warning though. It feels like a finished browser but is still in Preview. Make sure you don't have any duplicated Text encoders on your system.
For OS X iCab is still being primed. OmniWeb however, will give you enough control over popups.
Browser security has a technical solution-AdShield (Score:3, Informative)
In the meantime, there's pop-up preventer software (Score:2, Informative)