ELM Bulletin - November 30, 2009
Safely Closing Pop-Up and Pop-Under Windows
We’ve all seen the pop-up (or pop-under) window; a window that appears as we surf the Internet and which offers no end of wonderful things if only we click on it; waiting for us to give in to its temptation so it can deliver its payload. In this ELM Bulletin I’ll tell you how to safely close a pop-up without bringing your mouse anywhere near it.
Pop-ups are a favoured method of delivering spyware. The safest way to keep a pop-up from installing spyware is to close the pop-up. In some cases, however, the entire pop-up might be a button, even the icon we think would close it. Simply by closing the window normally we would activate its payload. So how do we safely close a potentially dangerous pop-up?
There are two tools built into Windows that provide reliable methods to close a pop-up without actually touching it:
Method 1 – Use the Task Bar Icon – The simplest way to close a pop-up without actually clicking on it is to right-click on the pop-up’s icon in the Task Bar (the Task Bar is the bar at the bottom of your display that shows your running applications) and choose Close from the menu. If all goes as expected, the pop-up will close.
Method 2 – Use Task Manger – Spyware pop-ups are made by very clever people (they’re bad, not stupid) who can prevent the Close button from appearing on the Task Bar icon. In these cases you need Task Manger, included with all versions of Windows. Task Manager allows us to close any open window without interacting with that window. In current Windows versions the Task Manager can be accessed in one of two ways:
A – Right click on an empty area in the Task Bar and select Task Manager from the menu
B – Press CTRL + ALT + DEL at the same time and select Task Manger from the menu
By default Task Manager opens as a multi-tabbed window, clicking on the Applications tab will display a list all of running applications. Just highlight the entry corresponding to the pop-up and then click on the End Task button in the lower right corner of Task Manger. You should see the annoying and possibly dangerous pop-up disappear.
If either of these methods doesn’t close the pop-up, there is a third, brute force method that always works but which should be used only as a last resort:
Method 3 – Power Down – If neither of these methods work and you are certain that you’re not going to click anywhere on the pop-up your only other alternative is to save all your work and shut down the computer. Ensure that all your work as been saved and that all programs other than the pop-up are closed. Hold down the power button of your computer for about ten seconds and the system should shut down. Either that or you can uplug it (and remove the battery if you’re on a notebook).
Regardless of what method you use I strongly recommend a complete spyware scan on your computer once the pop-up as been closed. You want to be certain that all the nasties are gone before they start causing real problems.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about this or any other issue.
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Peter Rhebergen Telephone |
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