Install the Google toolbar and it's popup blocker http://toolbar.google.com
Check your registry settings for Intenet Explorer too. You can have the symptoms you describe both without the particular web pages you visit having popups coded in them (wouldn't think there are any popups on ET pages) AND without having an actual adware program running on your PC.
There are registry settings that can instruct IE to route all your searches through a particular place before going to your normal search engine and that can direct it to route all your web destinations to a particular address first (with your destination sent as a parameter). It's designed to allow organizations to control/track traffic generated by employees/members, but if you downloaded and ran some bit of code buried in something you thought was legit it could have changed these registry settings.
If that happens, then all your searches can be routed through one of the many sites that try to secretly track your search preferences and then sell that info (unlike Google, Yahoo, etc. these guys tag your searches to you through a unique ID). All of your web page access requests can also be routed through one of the many outfits that track this info (and sell it) - and again, all your accesses get recorded against the unique ID they've assigned you.
You won't normally see any of this happen because the websites in the middle of these spy-a-thons immediately reroute you to where you thought you were going.
Look in the various registry keys under both:
HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer
and
HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer
for suspicious entries/settings such as in the Search subhive, in the Main subhive (any search or default settings.
Don't remember the exact settings that I've seen, but I've seen lots of this on the PC of the son of one of my friends - he's forever downloading and running some piece of shit program or gadget that then infects his machine.
I finally told him/them that if he's going to treat his PC like a toilet and throw any old shit into it, he'd better learn to use a plunger - don't call me anymore.
Check your registry settings for Intenet Explorer too. You can have the symptoms you describe both without the particular web pages you visit having popups coded in them (wouldn't think there are any popups on ET pages) AND without having an actual adware program running on your PC.
There are registry settings that can instruct IE to route all your searches through a particular place before going to your normal search engine and that can direct it to route all your web destinations to a particular address first (with your destination sent as a parameter). It's designed to allow organizations to control/track traffic generated by employees/members, but if you downloaded and ran some bit of code buried in something you thought was legit it could have changed these registry settings.
If that happens, then all your searches can be routed through one of the many sites that try to secretly track your search preferences and then sell that info (unlike Google, Yahoo, etc. these guys tag your searches to you through a unique ID). All of your web page access requests can also be routed through one of the many outfits that track this info (and sell it) - and again, all your accesses get recorded against the unique ID they've assigned you.
You won't normally see any of this happen because the websites in the middle of these spy-a-thons immediately reroute you to where you thought you were going.
Look in the various registry keys under both:
HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer
and
HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer
for suspicious entries/settings such as in the Search subhive, in the Main subhive (any search or default settings.
Don't remember the exact settings that I've seen, but I've seen lots of this on the PC of the son of one of my friends - he's forever downloading and running some piece of shit program or gadget that then infects his machine.
I finally told him/them that if he's going to treat his PC like a toilet and throw any old shit into it, he'd better learn to use a plunger - don't call me anymore.
