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How to Detect Popup Blocker
Last updated: Mar 9, 2005
We shall test not only the ability to block popup ads, but also we shall consider how the
advertiser can find that his advertising is blocked by some popup killer. This is
important, because
if he finds out that his advertising is blocked, he can use alternate ways to show it,
for example he can "levy war" against the popup killer by cycling popup ads, until
the popup killer is
halted. If the popup killer pretends to be a human, it can counteract the
advertiser's attempts to "levy war" against it.
Let's look on the popup blocker software from the advertiser's point of view.
Advertiser wants to show ads, so if there is an anti-advertisement
software, he wants to detect and neutralize it.
It seems to be a simple problem. If the popup window has been
closed then a popup killer is somewhere over there. But unfortunately the user
can also close a popup window.
Our popup killer detector must be able to tell a program from a human user.
Most frequently a popup window appears after the Java script operator xWin=window.open(...)
is executed. We can find out if a popup killer is active only by analyzing the xWin
properties. The following options are possible:
- xWin is undefined (only a popup killer can do this).
- xWin is defined, but it isn't a window object (only a popup killer
can do this).
- xWin is a window object and it is closed earlier than Human_Reaction_Time
(only a popup killer can do this).
- xWin is a window object and it is closed later than Human_Reaction_Time
(it is very likely that a user sees this window and there is no popup
killer in his system).
Human_Reaction_Time is a time required for a human to recognize a
window and close it. In the tests below we assume that Human_Reaction_Time=0.5.
These properties are the basis for the popup killer detector. Click
here to start the one...
Gabriel Logan-Wright (Savvy Multimedia) has researched Norton Internet Security firewall and
has submitted NIS detector. Click
here to start the one...
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