Profuse pop-up ads in Firefox 35 despite ‘No Pop-ups’ being set

Topic

New Reply

How do I stop Firefox producing a blank sheet labelled ‘AdChoices’ which when the ‘close’ icon is clicked, waits for the browser page to respond to the entry of a URL and then comes up with adverts!
I’ve cleared out all my cookies, done Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes scans, with no result.
(System is Asus, windows 7, IE 11.)
Am I likely to lose these ads on going to 37? My other choice is to get rid of Firefox!

Reply | Quote

Replies

Something as simple as deleting the cookies associated with AdChoices can be enough, look at the ad URL on hover in the staus bar and use the main xxxxxx.com part in your search for the cookies in Options > Privacy. While you’re there, try changing the cookie settings to disallow 3rd party cookies except from visited (Use custom settings for history).

Reply | Quote

Until you use CCleaner or similar to remove cookies – set it to retain that blocking cookie first.

Reply | Quote

How do I stop Firefox producing a blank sheet labelled ‘AdChoices’ which when the ‘close’ icon is clicked, waits for the browser page to respond to the entry of a URL and then comes up with adverts!
I’ve cleared out all my cookies, done Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes scans, with no result.
(System is Asus, windows 7, IE 11.)
Am I likely to lose these ads on going to 37? My other choice is to get rid of Firefox!

I watch quite a bit of TV and sports online which are notorious for having popups and redirects to bad sites and found that the following Add-ins help tremendously in cutting back ad pop up windows and redirects:
1. Adblock Plus-No browser should be without it.
2. Blur (formerly DoNotTrackMe)
2. Better Privacy (super cookie safeguard) You can set it to delete all cookies and it handles also LSO cookies.

These add-ins combined with a good AV, firewall and of course MalwareBytes and CCleaner provide great protection.

Reply | Quote

I used these two suggestions, but they brought up nothing.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/junkware-removal-tool/

I’ll try the other suggestions shortly and report back, before updating Firefox.

Reply | Quote

Do you have the logs from JRT/ADWCleaner?

The problem with throwing these types of cleaners at an ‘unknown’ is that, if they detect/remove nothing of note/relevance, they can also remove traces/logs from which you may have been able to isolate your issue.

*JRT has recently (as of yesterday, I think, v6.5.5) dropped the clearing of Windows Event logs, so you might still have those to work with for clues.

Reply | Quote

JRT, like Combofix and other security -related tools, is sometimes updated many times per day.

If your tools don’t pick up a Firefox hijack or adware, as in this instance, what do you check next, what’s left to check?

EDIT: JRT’s up to 6.5.7, as of sometime before I posted last.

Reply | Quote

Or blocking 3rd party cookies from sites not visited and removing any AdChoices cookies.

Reply | Quote

Sledgehammer meet nut 🙂

Reply | Quote

Maybe you should explain the potential pitfalls that may be encountered when using such extensions then?

Reply | Quote

I was thinking more along the lines of ad-blocking extensions and their possible consequences (closely tied to this topic): how to buy from a site when ‘something’ is blocking it, through to cost implications for site owners.

Reply | Quote

Many thanks to all above – I managed to stop the pop-ups by restarting Firefox with add-ons disabled – no more pop-ups.
However, this raises its own problems, one of which is that I cannot find which add-on is causing the problem – there seems to be no function in Firefox to manage add-ons other than to add them – one cannot disable them one at a time or delete them.

Reply | Quote

– there seems to be no function in Firefox to manage add-ons other than to add them – one cannot disable them one at a time or delete them.

You should be able to do both:

Disable or remove Add-ons | Firefox Help – Mozilla Support

Reply | Quote

@Poltor:
Firefox 37.x.x Tools, Add-ons gets you to the Add-on manager. I can Disable EVERY single add-on by itself and all except for “WordWeb one-click lookup” have a Remove button.

@All:
I do have some (extensive…) experience with malware removal. Yesterday some bad behavior on a customer’s machine stumped me. After having run AdwCleaner, JRT and Malwarebytes it still was not starting TaskManager and MSE. Almost in desparation I tried EmsiSoft and voila, another 300+ vestiges of malstuff and the machine was okay.

Sometimes it just needs a different mix of utilities. Although YMMV.

Reply | Quote