I was not around during this time period. I have seen videos reference this type of thing, but I have never seen it ever happen to me or anyone I know. Is it still around? Or have the notification pop ups taken the place of this type of infection. Did something need to be installed for this to work? Or was it all in the browser.
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Its why they invented popup blockers for web browsers.
Oh it was horrible. My grandparents ruined 2 dells and a Compaq lol
not that I remember, toolbars were really bad though I had opera full of them
A common story. First, you come to a person to help connect the Internet. Then he calls you because the computer has turned into an uncontrollable advertising board.
good old days.
You have no idea, I was there for the ad wars, and Futurama has predicted its return.
Yea, pretty much every computer I was called to “fix” for family and friends back in the day had this kind of crap on it.
It was like people didn’t understand how to uncheck the checkbox when installing stuff, and they didn’t know how to read the text that said stuff like: “*Do you want to install Bippy Boo search bar?*”
And then they’d be extremely confused when the Bippy Boo search bar appeared, and they wouldn’t have the brains to simply uninstall it.
Ad-ware that served ads all over the screen, no matter what you were doing.
Worse actually with 12 browser toolbars installed too
Missing all of the win a free xbox 360 ads from myspace
EXTREMELY.
If you clicked on one wrong thing, you’re done for.
That’s pretty much how any shared family computer was guaranteed to look in 2002.
Btw some of those popups could randomly be naked women making moaning noises. Always a good time when someone new comes over and you’re on Neopets on the family PC in the living room and then BAM everyone thinks you’re looking at porn.
It was pretty easy to basically soft lock your browser back in the day with those. Kinda unhinged no one considered letting Javascript open pop-ups was bad.
Yes, it was *horrendous!*
You’d click the tab for the browser and like 5 pop ups would be attached. If you didn’t close them as they came up it would pile up. The screen shot we see here would probably get like this after 1-3 hours of browsing without closing any of the tabs as they came up
More normal than many believe today.
I wasn’t there either, but I know very well that knowledge about the internet and its dangers was still developing…
It was normal that while browsing you gave a wrong click or entered a strange page and ended up downloading a virus to the PC, sometimes people were fooled by a fake email…
And anti-malware systems were still in their infancy…
Generally it was nothing serious that destroyed the PC, but since all this was new, many did not know what could be done to eliminate the virus and save the PC.
It still happens today, but very rarely thanks to the fact that Google has improved a lot in blocking and warning about suspicious pages, and the anti-malware systems have also improved a lot.
So much so that even if you downloaded any of these viruses, they would generally be useless since the system would automatically block them.
Used to get machines at the repair shop that were more malware than operating system
So common, there’s even an ATHF episode centered around them.
PTSD intensifies
You just brought back so many repressed memories
Yea sometimes u can trigger infinite pop ups. They keep popping up endlessly
People used to format C: and clean install WinXP every couple or months or even less just to make sure all the hidden accumulated crap in their computers was vanish. Anyway, what you’re seeing is plain exaggeration, most users never got to that level of annoyance, at least no more than once. After learning the hard way, common sense an caution prevented most of that bs
Ethan Zuckerman invented popups but said he didn’t know they would be hated for being so annoying, so his creation was made with good (although flawed) intentions. It’s really interesting to wonder what would the internet look like if he didn’t invent popups; would it be ad-free or at least reduced, or would someone else just invent the same thing later on and is inevitable?
Well… It depends on what you used your computer for…
Trying to find porn in the early 2000s was full of exactly this but porn and it was wildly falsely advertised.
Yeah, let’s go!
https://preview.redd.it/d37zxsgyjwue1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=b99211bbd2d367261b49c33fbfb9d4529f222083
Uhh I think this only happened to me when I downloaded malware from limewire
Yeah pop ups were really this bad.
Im going to say its a joke. Because in my archives I have this bad boy which I downloaded off a forum a long ass time ago.
https://preview.redd.it/okq78fwymwue1.png?width=801&format=png&auto=webp&s=4a4274d8cb53e78e8df1b14c95e7408af2e94bfc
A few other fun ones:
‘pop-under’ ads that deliberately forced the window into the background so it would be there after you closed the main browser.
pop-ups that spawn when you browse away from a page or even other pop-ups
pop-ups that force the browser full screen and try to block navigation controls.
bonus: Having a Windows computer directly connected to a cable/DSL connection made them particularly open to ‘net send’ spam, where the (often oddly threatening) ad/message would show up in a standard Windows dialog box.
All of this enabled by imprescient OS/browser design.
edit: also only 4 browser windows and 1 ‘prompt’ dialog is rookie numbers
It was so bad that these examples aren’t even the worst of it.
Back then computer protection was mid. Now days your browser is more secure than this OS was. Downloading the wrong thing or even just opening a email would result in some form of hack. People are resilient for sure.
Bonzi buddy, and other adware/spyware garbage search bars were common with any free software. They would install unless you unchecked a box. Regular old pop up ads were pretty extreme back then, too.
Lol, it was worse. The only ones we clicked on was porn related. Never worked out. Glad I never had a PC and used the neighbors PC. That kid got in trouble for more crap I did than he did.
Very
Never saw them once honestly
2001-2009 yes everywhere. Windows 7 was the thing that really put a stop to it. A pop up/pop under blocker is still a thing integrated into every browser to this very day to prevent a reoccurrence of this.
You got both malware that did this and websites themselves would do it. Advertisements that just high jack your navigation and send you to a malicious site would also open a dozen other windows to other malicious sites. And the thing is that this increased exposure led to lots of defections through random stray clicks, or through Flash player which was a huge infection vector or browser vulnerabilities that allowed escalation to code execution on your host system.
Advertisements injecting code that breaks out of the browser sandbox is still a real threat today, and is the biggest reason why adblocking is important for security.
Back in college (1998-2002) I was actually running several persistent banner ad apps that ‘paid’ you for running them. They were meant to only give you credit when you were using your computers, but you could trick them by automating the mouse moving around and clicking randomly. The payouts were small, and often they didn’t actually send the money, but I think I made at least a couple hundred bucks off them, which was a lot for my broke ass. Check out this extremely 2000-era screenshot from my archives. SOO much history in these pixels.
https://preview.redd.it/45ikb74mtwue1.png?width=2624&format=png&auto=webp&s=570c54467944fc951a0f4a77d80481d07552442a
What’s worse, is they often had porn ads, which basically told your mom what you were up to.
Dont forget the toolbars for every single website
Some of these are just popup windows that certain web pages could flood you with, not actual malware, but yeah. It was a thing.
Not “too bad” as I don’t see Bonzai Buddy on that screenshot.
I had to clean this crap off so many peoples computers back in the day. On windows 95 or 98 I can’t remember but there was a malware that would open note pad infinitely as much as your pc could handle and crash it or lag it so bad you had to turn it off physically. Burn it all I say
When you were trying to get to the porn online as a teen and ended up with this. 😂
Dont forget the web browser toolbars as well
Bonzi Buddy sends his regards
There’s a reason the guy who invented popup ads hates what he did. It was a gateway to viruses like this and ads we have today.
My god I feel old