Are Safari popups inevitable?

Question

Level 1

63 points

Are Safari popups inevitable?

I still get popups on both iOS and MacOS. FWIW, even after a couple system upgrades, hard reboots, and so on. "No Popups" ALWAYS specified in Safari, from the time I purchased these devices! I always figured the "No Popups" setting was rather symbolic. Advertisers have always found a way around it. It seems some popups are inevitable. It's a hard life.

(FWIW I do not wish continually to browse strictly no-cookie incognito, as for example Techmeme requires a cookie for "Open stories in new tab" and Gmail needs cookies to make nice. I think even the websites for Apple, discussions, and Amazon love to have cookies. Maybe my bank and doctors and Social Security!)

Is my experience typical?

iOS 10.0.2

Posted on Oct 23, 2016 8:21 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

685,293 points

Dec 28, 2017 8:34 AM in response to F J Poblam

You are welcome. I think that is mostly a website function rather than a popup. You might try going to Safari/Safari Extensions and see if installing an adblock extension helps. You can always uninstall it later.

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Answer 2

F J Poblam Author

Level 1

63 points

Dec 28, 2017 8:32 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks for your response, Eric, but those are not the sorts of popups I'm getting. Much of what I get (probably 85%) is the familiar website interstitial. For example, New York Times or Washington Post "click now to subscribe". Perhaps not surprising, but nonetheless popups. Others occur when scrolling news articles down into the content. When arriving upon an image that ol' hidden pixel notifier—no doubt—triggers some sort of notifier to the news server which in turn does me the unwelcome favor of shoving out one of them danged popups. Stuff like that. Seems as if Safari is just saying, "Whatever…"

I am not impressed.

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Answer 3

F J Poblam Author

Level 1

63 points

Dec 28, 2017 8:41 AM in response to Eric Root

(Much later.) Upon install of the latest iOS I see that I’m getting LOTS of very annoying pop-ups. And a frequent deal where an “Amazon” gift card offer occupies the entire browser and can’t be brushed aside without superhuman effort. So, as per your advice, I have finally installed an ad blocker—a fremium version for testing, to see how it affects browser speed and battery life. I investigated them all and there seems to be no overwhelming agreement in which ad block is best, so I have taken a leap of faith. Thanks again for your advice.

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