So hows it work anyway???

[THE RADICAL]

Hey all--

Quick question I'd like to ask out of curiousity...

How do pop-up stoppers and anti-spammers actually work? Does anyone know what's in the code of the program that enables it to recognise a good e-mail from a bad one? Or a good legit website from a pop-up? I did a search on google, but it was mainly dominated by 'Try the so and so anti-spammer for 30 days free' and other kinds of websites promoting their anti-spam products. So I was just wondering how programs like that work? and also how sometimes some spam gets through anyway despite the program?

Just wonderin'...
Figured I'd start my summer off with a little outside info sense what I'm focusing on right now is networking and programming heh heh...

Any response is, as always, greatly appreciated.

--Peace

[cutty]

Well 'THE RADICAL' pop-up stoppers simple identify pop-up windows and prevent them. You see when a webpage is designed pop-ups are actually coded into the current page from which the pop-ups are generated while opening that page or leaving that page.

So in order words the program indetifies that code within the code of the parent page and prevents the pop-ups that this page would produce. Most pop-ups are usually javascript so they are pretty easily identified using a desired code.

As for anti-spammers on e-mail servers, they usually have a database of most of the addresses that are considered spam and they stop those, that's why you still end up getting some mail that's spam, cause they don't know of all the spam address unless it's presented to them. Basically in order words it works pretty much like how you set up filters for you e-mail. They identify the addresses and redirect them elsewhere. In the case of spam to your junkmail folder or trash.

I hope that helps. If I didn't quite answer your question to the fullest feel free to pm me.

Guidance...

[ShippMA]

The only way that i can see them working is buy looking at the content of the message, and/or who or where it was sent from. I'm sure that companies have a list of known spamming addresses, or going the other way a list of trusted sites to allow e-mails from. I would imagine that the blocking programs look for specific words or fraises that would only appear in spam and if these appear then it blocks, ie if the word vagina appeared chances are it's not a wanted piece of mail.

But that is just me making some educated guesses so please do not take this as completely correct, i could be way off, if i'm not it may give you a point to start from for research purposes, good luck.

/edit
dammit to slow by a couple of minutes
/edit

[Juridian]

Some pop up stoppers simply act as a filter, they get the page before it reaches your browser, identifies and parses out the client side script that would create the pop-ups, and sends the html on to your browser.

[AciDriveHB]

Ok here's a question though, what if that page is supposed to pop something up? For example at my work there is the main page you go to, and if you have a log in you can click this link and it pops up a login screen to log in. Or my Internet banking place, whenever I leave the website it throws up a "Thank You" message. So you are saying stuff like that would be taken out (well I mean at least the bank message at least)?

Here's a good example, what about AO? You know how inside a thread if you click on a link, thats opened inside of a new window, would that be allowed? I know it is looking for "certain" code within the parent page, but what type of code is it looking for.

I would be worried I'm missing something, or certian websites wouldn't work at all due to the fact of other windows that are opened depending on what you click... even though it's supposed to be opened and that's what you're after.

Follow me?
~AciD

[bluebeard96]

Well, I don't think most of them stop onClick events (such as you clicking on the login button). What they stop are the onLoad events that tell the browser to perform a pop-up as soon as the webpage is loaded (without any input from the viewer). I would assume that there are pop-up programs out there that let you specify sites to be exempted from blocking. I've never used the programs though, so I can't direct you to any specific ones.

[lumpyporridge]

"Ok here's a question though, what if that page is supposed to pop something up? For example at my work there is the main page you go to, and if you have a log in you can click this link and it pops up a login screen to log in. Or my Internet banking place, whenever I leave the website it throws up a "Thank You" message. So you are saying stuff like that would be taken out (well I mean at least the bank message at least)?"

The thing that i love most about mozilla is <right click> block images from this server <right click> supress popups from this site You can leave the sites you need to ,as is and rip all the ads and or popups from the obnoxious sites. I never see the ads here at AO or other sites other than the very first visit. It solves the problem of you missing content due to overzealous popup/adblockers and keeps your senses from being assaulted by annoyances (allow animations to repeat only once -- is a beautiful option too)

[cutty]

"Ok here's a question though, what if that page is supposed to pop something up? For example at my work there is the main page you go to, and if you have a log in you can click this link and it pops up a login screen to log in. Or my Internet banking place, whenever I leave the website it throws up a "Thank You" message. So you are saying stuff like that would be taken out (well I mean at least the bank message at least)?"

Yes 'lumpyporride' , the popup/adblockers should prevent these stuff from poping up. In most of these programs however you can identify trusted sites/url's that you would want to popup.

I hope that helps.

Guidance...

[Juridian]

It all depends on the program. Some are more complex and you can write your own rules on what to strip out and what not to. Others you get a limited number of choices.

Each type of pop up has a different type of event activating the new window(s). Some will be on page load, others when you leave the page, and finally others when you click something. It is a simple thing to identify the code for each event and then decide which to throw out and which to keep.

As others mentioned above, some do give you the ability to accept everything from certain sites, or block everything.

It doesn't stop at popups too. Some of this blocker software will let you do images, sounds, flash, whatever it is that irks you about the site.

[THE RADICAL]

I just wanted to thank everyone for the good discussion going on here. Thanks for the replies, now I can say I know a bit more about spam in general than what I used to.

Do you think there are advertising companies out there that try to hire people to find and exploit flaws in spam protection software in order to push their ad to the consumer at all?

Probably so but then again I'm not quite sure...