What tools you use to block irritating ads & pop-ups?

Google Hotbar works really well..

well I use adsubtract pro 2.55
I have used this prog for 2 plus years now and it has been very effective in blocking everything from advertisements to pop ups and auto refresh pages and unwanted background music as well as cookies, referrers and java applets and java scripts. u can control each item independently on which u choose to filter. u can even block animations.
http://www.adsubtract.com/pro/trial/download.html

I have to agree with the others in here mentioning the google toolbar that thing works wonders. It caches the information after learning your habits and makes it so that you don't have to worry about pop ups any more. I recommend the google toolbar it does the trick and it's free!!

The only thing that I dont really like about the Google bar is:

Quote:

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Google may collect information about web pages that you are viewing when the advanced functionality is enabled. However, this advanced functionality is optional, and can be easily disabled and re-enabled at any time (by selecting "Privacy Information..." in the Toolbar's "Google" menu.)

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But either than that it's great.

i use popup no-no and it workes very well to block those ads and if thats all you want it to do it will do only that, you just have to set the settings

you can dowload it from www.download.com

STOP-THE-POP is an awesome program
http://www.sureshotsoftware.com/stopthepop/

As mentioned by my many friends.. I use Google Toolbar.....

I found it extremely useful...... But I found one thing and that is that it blocks the page till the time it blocks all the Popups... Now typically if u lend on a fraud site...... U will see that the ads been blocked never come to end.. as a result you have to forcibly stop the page or forcibly close the browser CTRL_ALT_DEL way.... Now if you have many browser session active u may lose them when trying to forcibly close the browser.....

Apart from this it has great ease of use.....

for me gozillas admuncher combined with Zone Alarm did the job