14 DAY TRIAL // One thing that's certain is that when installing a new browser we're all looking for a solution that will at least take care of blocking all annoying pop-ups (not that there are any pleasant ones). If you were to count all the websites that you visit each day, and add one cent for each link that you access, the result would be impressive. This is the way many people and advertising companies get rich. So far so good, but since their wealth is based on your lost time and nerves, then something must be done.
Just like you use a specialized antivirus program and a specialized anti spyware program to be sure that your computer is safe, I think it's best if you used a specialized pop-up blocking program that will do this job better than all the ones integrated in the browsers.
Working with the program
I'm going to talk about Winguard Popup Remover, a little tool that will stop all popups from invading your internet browser.
It's compatible with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, America Online (AOL), Opera and Netscape. It would be better if you could configure it to be used with other browsers as well, but the selection its offering is wide enough, so you can't say that it's completely inflexible.
You can add friendly sites that you consider to be safe and the program will not block any popup coming from that website. Also, there's a blacklist section, where you can add either websites that you don't want to be bothered by, or view and enter patterns of titles that, when detected in a popup window, will trigger the program to react and block them (for instance when a browser window with a title that contains "No purchase necessary" intends on appearing on your screen, Winguard will block it and you won't be annoyed by it.
Also, the program has a history cleaner that you can use to clear visited websites, cookies, last files used, recent documents used, Internet data (cache), temporary files and empty the recycle bin's contents. You can also clean out the history for Acrobat reader, Microsoft Windows Media Player and Microsoft WordPad. This way, your privacy has a higher security level (the information stored in all upper mentioned components can be quite revealing, and is liable to be exploited by spyware programs and Trojans).
The program is hidden in the system tray, and you can access its preferences panel by right clicking its icon. If you have a proxy based Internet connection you won't have to worry because Winguard is compatible with proxies.
You can also set it up to block absolutely every popup (aggressive mode), but this option is only available for Internet Explorer. If you're a little bit more paranoid than the average individual, you can have the program block all images when browsing, and you will only see the text information.
Each time a popup is blocked, the program shows a balloon notification that informs you about its action.
The blocked popups are logged for as long as you want, and if you think that you've blocked an "innocent" one, you can simply go to the "Recently blocked popups" section. From here you can select to delete all of them, unblock the selected one for future references, or view it (if you think it holds valuable information).
When hovering over the icon in the system tray, Winguard informs you about how many popups it has blocked up to the current date. If the large number bothers you, there's the possibility of resetting it to zero, so it will look like you've been safe browsing all along.
The good
I'm glad that there is a specialized program that is meant to guard your browser from annoying popups. Winguard is simple in design in functionality, but does its job great. You do have to update it so that it can keep track of all the new methods that one could use to dodge such an application, but once you've downloaded the latest updates, there's nothing that can go past this piece of software.
The bad
The program includes support for the most popular browsers, but if you work with one that's not on the supported list, you can't do anything about it.
The truth
The producer claims that this is the best popup blocker on the market, and gives you a 15 days evaluation version to test and see for yourself.
Check out the screenshots below to get a glance at the program in action:
