Lately, ads are driving me mad. They block half the web page and when you click anywhere on them you go to another web page. How can I control these?
This has just got really bad in the last week or two. Naturally some advertising is OK but lately, it has got really bad and some web sites have become impossible to use because the ads are covering the info that I want to see.
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One common reason for this is an extension that snuck into Firefox when you installed something else. As the first step, I suggest you disable ALL nonessential or unrecognized extensions:
orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons > in the left column, click Extensions
Usually a link will appear above at least one disabled extension to restart Firefox. You can complete your work on the tab and click one of the links as the last step.
Does that help?
In case there is a central installation of adware or other unwanted software outside of Firefox, you can try a couple of different scanners to remove that as well. This support article lists some free tools: Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware.
Do a malware check with some malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
All these programs have free versions.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.
- Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware:
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - AdwCleaner:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Removal-Tools/AdwCleaner.shtml - SuperAntispyware:
http://www.superantispyware.com/ - Microsoft Safety Scanner:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx - Windows Defender: Home Page:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Spybot Search & Destroy:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Kasperky Free Security Scan:
http://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan
You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.
- Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller:
http://support.kaspersky.com/5350?el=88446
See also:
- "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked