A piece of the pop-up action

We all have them in our lives: The people who don`t really know what the Internet is all about. The people who are still astonished by search engines. The people who still believe everything they read in pop-up ads.

A friend once e-mailed me to ask if it was really true that his computer was transmitting an IP address at that very moment, and if so, what he should do about it. I told him a bit about IP addresses, proxy servers and a bit more about firewalls. I then also let him know that the company that popped up that particular piece of information while he was surfing probably wanted him to use its product. I went on to let him know that these types of ads should probably be regarded with the same level of contempt as those enthusiastic, muscular housewives who were once sit-com stars and are now offering to sell you some household appliance on TV.

I`ve grown accustomed to ignoring pop-ups. I don`t even close them down until I`m finished surfing because they keep coming back and getting in my way. One day I`ll probably even get around to loading anti-pop-up software onto my PC, but not anytime soon. But my friend`s worries got me to thinking that there must be a lot of people out there who have been taken in by these sneaky little ads.

I`ve grown accustomed to ignoring pop-ups.

Georgina Guedes, Journalist, ITWeb

Apparently there are. The ads originate predominantly in America, and it is the Americans who have finally got the hell in (of course). A lawsuit has been filed against DoubleClick, a provider of products and services used by direct marketers, Web publishers and advertisers to plan, execute and analyse marketing programs. In other words, these are the miscreants responsible for pop-up ads.

DoubleClick has apparently been responsible for the dissemination of over 630 billion ads on the Internet on behalf of its customers. That`s quite a lot of pop-ups. In fact that`s more than 100 ads for every person on the planet, connected or not, and I know I`ve had my fair share.

The lawsuit is a class action, which means that it seeks to represent every American who has ever been subjected to a pop-up window. The complaint states: "Through the use of fake user interface dialogues that give the false appearance of being computer error messages, DoubleClick tricked millions of Internet users into interrupting the work they were busy performing to respond to the fraudulent error message, only to unexpectedly find both computer and user thus hijacked to the commercial Web sites of DoubleClick`s customers."

This follows last year`s class action against DoubleClick that defined the privacy conditions under which it made its services available to its customers. As part of its settlement, it had to purge a database of surfers` personal information that it had gleaned and conduct a public information campaign consisting of 300 million banner ads that educate consumers on Internet privacy. I wonder if it was the dearth of public information ads that finally spurred this year`s lawsuit.

The fact that the originator of this pop-up scourge is finally getting its comeuppance gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling in my gut. I only wish we, as South Africans, could get a piece of the litigious action.