Ah! Pop-Ups

Ah! Pop-ups. You either love them or you hate them. I’m confident that I can say that most of us hate them. They are annoying, intrusive, and often slow down your computer.

Now and then, I’ll see a pop-up that might possibly be a scam. Why do I think that? Because I don’t even have the program it wants me to “click here to update”. Weird, huh? Well, it happens. The hackers are everywhere and will try everything and anything to get inside your computer. Heck, they’ve already gotten into part of it by just getting that annoying pop-up through.

And, yes, I have an anti-virus program but the hackers still find a way to get through – at least part of the way.

A few weeks ago, I had a pop-up saying, “Your driver is incomplete. Click here to update.”

Which driver? Which program? Drivers are the software that help run your computer properly. For instance, do you have and use a mouse? You need a driver for that. Your hard “drive” uses a driver.

Do you have a CD-ROM? Well, guess what! That also requires a driver.

And the list goes on and on …. and yes, on!

Without your drivers, you might as well just try using a carboard box as a computer.

That said, when I saw the window (yes, it used a driver), that said, “My driver was out of date” but didn’t tell me which one, I knew something was not right. I closed the window and immediately ran a manual virus scan.

Luckily, whatever virus was trying to invade my pc, didn’t get through. But, oh, how it tried.

Years ago, I installed a family tree builder from a genealogy site. When that site increased their prices, I uninstalled the program. Or at least, I thought I did. For whatever reason, every month, I’ll get that annoying pop-up asking if I want to download the newest version. I don’t! However, that pop-up has three windows: 1. Download, 2. Open, 3. search. Naturally, you can’t close two and three unless you close one first. Unfortunately, each window takes its sweet annoying time-wasting time to pop-up before I can close them, and yes, they need to be closed in the descending order: 3, 2, 1. Heaven forbid I try to close out 1 before 3 finishes to open.

How about the ones you receive while online? You’re happily scrolling through your favorite site and see an enticing video. It catches your interest, so you click it on. Without warning and very suddenly, a big, red window pops up saying ‘WARNING, (etc)”

Some of us have seen them before while some of us were lucky enough to have never seen them. Oh, goodness, what to do?

My advice? Immediately, back out of that page or power down. That is definitely a virus! That window will always tell you to call an 800 number put out by Microsoft to solve your virus problem. IT IS NOT!!! Microsoft doesn’t give you virus protection OR virus cures. Microsoft doesn’t care. The program doesn’t work like that.

There are many antivirus programs that will carefully monitor your drivers and alert you when one needs updating. If your antivirus program doesn’t do that, perhaps you might want to look into which ones will and invest in one.

Yes, they will do automatic scans for viruses, but you can also manually scan your computer. Yes, they will automatically update your computer’s drivers.

Will they stop unwanted pop-ups? Unfortunately, no, but they will save you hundreds of dollars and hours of frustration.

As for those nasty pop-ups? Unfortunately, the only way I’ve found so far is to pay for an extra program to avoid them – something I’m, at this time, unwilling to do. While I wait for my very old computer to close those unwanted images, I walk away, head for the kitchen and make a cup of tea (or coffee, depending on my mood) and keep busy in other ways.

I guess at this point, the only pop-up I’d like to see is my husband “pop-up” and cook tonight’s dinner.

Since I don’t see that happening, I’ll get off my butt and pop myself into the kitchen.