Bye Bye Pop-Ups

Pop-up ads. We have all experienced them. We all hate them, and they never stop. They know who you are, what you like, and what you have viewed and purchased. No matter how many times you ask a site not to share your content or track your activity, they still do. If that doesn’t concern you, it should. Your every move is recorded and known. Big Brother is alive and well.

In a society where everything is a rent purchase or an ongoing monthly charge, there are no options to avoid the intrusiveness of the internet collecting your data. While a VPN offers some safeguards, most of us don’t want to pay another monthly rent for one either. We shouldn’t have to.

How We Got Here?

It began with telemarketing. After receiving many complaints, the government created the Do Not Call list. That worked well for a while. While it didn’t stop telemarketers and solicitors for your votes during elections, most did stop. Then came the cell phone.

Initially, we were safe and cozy, without being bombarded by unwanted calls and spam. Then that all changed. For some reason, the powers that be thought it was perfectly fine to overdo it with every kind of advertisement and spam texts, calls, and emails. Not only that, but advertising, like cockroaches, makes sure that every waking moment of your life, you are slapped in the face with ads. Everywhere.

Billboards that flash, pop-up video ads on every page of the internet, spam texts, and calls from every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a phone or a computer create a constant barrage of messages that say you viewed this or that we noticed you checked this out. How about this one? Because you purchased so and so, we thought you might want this to go with it. It never ends. How on earth is it legal to sell my intimate personal information?

No Privacy-Scary

You can’t have anything to yourself anymore. You have absolutely no privacy. Do not delude yourselves. Every time you think about it, dystopian sci-fi stories and movies come to mind. You know the ones. Where they know where you are, what you are doing, and whether you are doing what they want you to do.

I think of books like the Left Behind series, where you were tracked by your cell phone, even when you weren’t using it, and were found as they hunted for their targets. I think of movies like Divergence or Logan’s Run, and others, where entities controlled your every move and could find you at a moment’s notice.

Will this invasive technology ever stop? No. Period. It will only get worse.

As more and more dubious entities see the benefits of controlling our lives, and as the government continues to cater to them, there will never be an end to it. The government wants to control us too, and all this new tech is a testing ground for how far they can take it. They are getting better and better at it. They use fear, anger, hate, and all our human emotions to manipulate us. Remember COVID? I looked at what happened that year as a very successful experiment in mass population control. And it succeeded. They know what scares you.

Solutions?

So, can anything be done? Probably not. Not probably, actually. More like just plain no. As long as they see they can do A to get B, we are stuck with what we have permitted for our convenience. But I can offer a small thing that can make some of this better, or at least improve your online surfing experience.

A little quiet company called uBlock Origin has this gem of a product that stops almost all pop-ups and ads dead in their tracks. The best part is that it’s free. At least for now, until some greedy corporation gets its hands on it and ruins it.

The program is available at uBlockOrigin.com. It is compatible with almost all browsers. While it is not supported on Mac iOS systems, there is an Origin Lite version that is. I have it on all my devices, and I run all Apple products.

After installing it, you can adjust the level of filtering in the filtering mode. The options are no filtering, basic, optimal, and complete. I think that is simple and self-explanatory. I use optimal, and here’s why.

My Experience

I write, as many of you do, and when I do, I sometimes use a thesaurus called Word Hippo. It is a fantastic site, but recently the pop-up ads have become a problem. Not only because they suddenly appeared everywhere, but also because they were video ads that flashed and were outrageously distracting.

The last straw came when some ads and the site’s solicitation to upgrade would freeze across my entire screen and lock. There was no visible X, and I was not about to waste my time looking for the mythical unicorn to close it. I stopped using it and went old school. Yes, a book. They still have them, you know.

I was griping about it to a techie acquaintance, and I was offered this magic green pill. It may have been red. I don’t remember which.

I downloaded it and gave it a go. I thought, why not try it, and I am so thankful I did. I get virtually no more pop-ups anywhere. When I am on the computer, I have this little red badge in the browser header. That little gem tells me how many ads, pop-ups, or threats it has stopped on each and every site.

Actual Example

If I go on Word Hippo right now, it shows me 70. 70 in the same instance I have gone to the site.

Instagram: 13, Amazon: 43, BlueSky: 3, and WordPress: an astounding 114. Those numbers are just from clicking to the site. I didn’t even begin to surf or troll the sites. It is a rare and precious tool.

My Take

I love it. I am not saying whether to use it or not, but if you are sick and tired of being bombarded with a barge of crap you don’t want to see, be distracted by, or be annoyed by, look into it. Read about it; don’t just take my word for it. Do your homework. You might just be glad you did.

As for me, I owe my acquaintance a beverage from a libation company I don’t have to view ads for.

(Published on Substack, August 2026)

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