Program to remove pop-up windows. AdwCleaner to remove adware and unwanted programs from your computer

Below is a list of the best free ad blockers. But none of them is perfect, so it is most effective to use several solutions at once.

Types of Advertising

When choosing the best blockers, we adhered to the following criteria:

• Completely free;
• Good user ratings;
• No need to register an account to use;
• Recently updated (within the last 12 months);
• Implementation as a plugin for at least one browser or operating system;
• Blocks “media ads” (pop-ups, banners, videos, static images, wallpapers, text ads);
• Blocks advertisements in videos (for example, on YouTube).

To test blockers, we used several sites with different types of advertisements. Among them: Forbes.com, Fark.com, YouTube and OrlandoSentinel.com.
On Orlando Sentinel, we found aggressive ad formats that most ad blockers cannot block. In fact, only a few of them effectively blocked all ads shown on the Orlando Sentinel.

We've tested each of these free tools based on the criteria provided and given them a rating. In addition, the ad blockers listed below, with the exception of Stend Fair Adblocker, are open source software.

The best ad blockers - browser plugins and applications

The best option for blocking ads is to install a specialized plugin or use a browser with a built-in blocker. They interact with sites much more accurately than standalone programs running in the background on your computer.

Stands Fair AdBlocker
It is only available for the Google Chrome browser. With this plugin you can block all types of advertising. But it is only available as an add-on for the Google Chrome browser.
Stands Fair AdBlocker is not designed to block ad blocks, although it can be used for that as well. The development company believes in honest advertising and rewards users who create white lists of ads shown on sites.

Rating: 7/7

Main advantages: Block ads on Facebook and Google search.

Works with: Google Chrome

AdBuard AdBlock
AdGuard AdBlock was able to block all types of ads. But the biggest disadvantage of this ad blocker is that all the features are only available in the premium version. However, the difference between blocker versions is explained only in the reference documentation.

Rating: 7/7

Main advantages: Possibility to convert whitelist to blacklist.

Works with: Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Microsoft Edge, Yandex Browser.

Opera Browser
One of the fastest and most productive browsers. He was one of the first to offer his users a built-in ad blocker.

Rating: 7/7

Main advantages: built into a popular browser, easy whitelisting.

Works: with Opera.

Adblock Plus
Is the most popular ad blocking software with over 10 million downloads in the Google Chrome browser alone. This is a free and open source project. Adblock Plus is the basis for many other free blockers.

Adblock Plus was one of the tools that failed to do anything about the ads shown on the Orlando Sentinel. Unfortunately, even the “element blocking” function could not help. ABP is good and popular, but far from perfect.

Rating: 6.5 / 7

Main advantages: presence of anti-blocking filter.

Works with: Google Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Yandex Browser, iOS, Android.

uBlock AdBlocker Plus
Unlike other tools, uBlock AdBlocker Plus is easy to use. However, there are some things that the developer could improve. For example, the blocker's website is just a page with the name of the plugin and no additional information.

Block AdBlocker Plus effectively blocks most advertisements, but still lets some through. For example, it did not block the automatic playback of advertising on one of the sites.

Rating: 6.5 / 7

Main advantages: easy to use, ability to lock elements.

Works with: Google Chrome.

uBlock Plus Adblocker
The biggest drawback of this plugin is that it has a clunky interface. There are several settings that are activated using switches. But most of the work involves digging into the parameters. However, uBlock Plus Adblocker effectively blocked all advertisements, including autoplay videos.

Rating: 6.5 / 7

Main advantages: filters elements and unsafe advertisements.

Works with: Google Chrome.

AdBlocker Genesis Plus
If you have used uBlock Origin or AdBlock Plus, this plugin is for you. AdBlocker Genesis Plus is a fork of other popular plugins. It uses the same basic source code, but implements many of its own features.

Its user interface is slightly different, but the ad blocking functionality is the same. The plugin's developer claims to have specifically removed tracking code from the uBlock/AdBlock Plus source code to ensure greater privacy.

Rating: 6/7

Main advantages: no tracking code, simple whitelist button, block items button.

Works with: Google Chrome.

Adblock Ultimate
Open source project. The tool allows you to deal with most advertisements. In testing, it was able to block YouTube ads and most display ads on websites. This ad blocker has high ratings: 4.84 out of 5 from Google Chrome users and over 600,000 installations.

Rating: 6/7

Main advantages: Quick “item blocking” feature that allows you to instantly block any advertisements.

Works with: Google Chrome.

NoScript

This tool is only suitable for Firefox and is more of a script blocker than an ad blocker. NoScript prevents all types of scripts from loading on web pages: JavaScript, Java, Flash and others. You can allow certain types of scripts to be loaded. But by default, the tool applies a fairly “hard” filter.

Rating: 5.5/7

Main advantages: Complete blocking of scripts.

Works with: Firefox.

Why aren't Privacy Badger and Ghostery on this list?

You may have heard about the popular ad blockers Privacy Badger and Ghostery. The fact is that these plugins are not designed to block ads, but to refuse ads and other elements of sites that violate user privacy. As a result, they both block certain types of advertisements. But first and foremost, the tools are aimed at protecting privacy.

This means that by using any of these plugins, you will not see the ads you may be interested in. They also provide limited control over what types of ads are blocked. And given their “good advertising” policy, you won’t be able to block a certain part of the ads at all.

Google Chrome Ad Blocker

Despite the loud statements of Google developers, the built-in Chrome ad blocker is not capable of much. While testing it, we found that it skips almost all advertisements.
At the same time, control of the built-in blocker is very limited. Even finding a site that had ads blocked was a challenge. And since Chrome's ad blocker is designed to block certain types of advertisements, most of them are not intercepted.

A note about ad blocking and site revenue

Users hate advertising for several reasons:

• It may slow down page loading;
• Many ads are intrusive and annoying;
• Advertising often does not meet the interests of users;
• Ads may interrupt the viewing experience (particularly on video streaming sites such as Hulu or Crunchyroll);
• Many advertisements contain tracking code that sends information about user behavior to third parties.

The quality of the ads shown has become so bad that even Google has started using an ad blocker in its Chrome browser. But Google's intentions. The company owns a large advertising division and, most likely, Chrome does not block AdSense ads.
The advertisements shown to us have various disadvantages. And they can be used to spread computer viruses by hackers.

Before installing any of the blockers, keep in mind that the sites you visit often rely on advertising revenue to survive. Profit received from broadcasting advertising still remains the main source of income for many Internet resources. In recent years, the use of ad blockers has caused sites to lose $15.8 billion in revenue.
Whitelisting is a good way to ensure that sites you like receive ad revenue. Even if you never click on the ads, they all earn early income from ad views.

Translation of the article " 10 best free ad blockers to remove ads and popups» was prepared by the friendly project team

Adguard is an effective program for blocking ads in the browser Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Yandex Browser and many others. In other words, this is a full-fledged Internet filter that can completely protect the user from any annoying advertising that he sees on most visited Internet sites. It’s no secret that most webmasters value the time and nerves of their users, but there are also those who cover all available places on the site with advertising, making it not only unreadable, but practically unopenable in the browser. To combat such aggressive imposition of advertising, it was a free version of the Adguard program has been created, which can be downloaded for free from our portal using the direct links below.

Brief characteristics of the software

• Antibanner(blocks any banner advertising, both dynamic and static advertising units; supports work with more than 20 popular browsers);
• Anti-phishing(a full-fledged algorithm for blocking dangerous sites of dubious origin and distributing malicious scripts);
• Parental control(a popular mechanism that ensures safe use of the Internet by children, protecting them from unwanted information in the form of resources with erotic content and other adult content).

Block ads in any browser

In the case of Adguard things are really simpler. This program does not require the installation of separate plugins and extensions; it is suitable for blocking ads on all known browsers without prior configuration - Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, Yandex browser and other browsers will interact with it equally effectively. The same applies to search engines. Use the one that is most convenient for you at the moment: Google, Rambler, Yandex, Yahoo and others.

Advantages of Adguard:

1. a nice bonus is the introduction of a new mechanism that closely monitors RAM and tracks any phishing attempts to influence the integrity of your funds in online banking systems;
2. pre-blocked advertising in the browser from numerous sites greatly facilitates the loading of Internet pages, freeing up some of the saved traffic for other needs of the operating system;
3. an additional level of protection - the program is not blocked at all by common antiviruses and firewalls, thereby increasing the security performance of OS Windows significantly.
4. The program's database of unreliable Internet sites is constantly expanding. For its high-quality formation, developers, in addition to their own efforts, collaborate with such well-known sources as: Malware Domains, Google Safe Browsing and useful lists from Web of Trust. This way, Adguard easily recognizes almost all fraudulent and outright malicious resources, which are best avoided;
5. a significant increase in performance when working with websites (you will immediately notice that most Internet pages begin to load much faster. This is because Adguard blocks advertising videos, large flickering banners, and distracting pop-up notifications even before the page itself opens in front of you) .
6. advanced parental control compared to competitors (after the setup procedure, you can be completely sure that your child will not encounter information harmful to his psyche. He simply will not be able to access a site that is dangerous for him, which will be immediately blocked. In addition , the software will instantly remove from the list of materials requested in the search engine all links where the content contains profanity. If your smart kids suddenly decide to deliberately bypass the established restrictions, there is a separate password system for this that will not allow them to do this just like that);
7. excellent support for the Russian language and the ability to purchase an extended version with additional functionality (purchase of a license key is required);
8. cross-platform ( Free Adguard can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices).

The list of useful features of Adguard is not limited to the above advantages, because it also includes an anti-tracking function. It allows you to reliably hide your IP address while traveling on the Internet, prevents third-party cookies from harming your operating system, and vigilantly protects your personal data from leaking to the Internet (additional configuration required).

The developers should be thanked for creating such a simple and understandable interface, as well as for making it easy to download to your hard drive (we remind you that you can download Adguard for free in Russian using the links below).

Conclusion: and although the program will not be able to determine the reason if the browser opens on its own with advertising (this is a consequence of the constant activity of viruses), Adguard will be able to help you with how to permanently remove advertising in the Yandex or Google browser one hundred percent. Therefore, if you want to browse websites without the annoying appearance of all kinds of uncontrolled notifications and even better protect your family from exposure to unwanted content, then this utility will help you realize your intention quickly and to the fullest. But you should also remember that the extended functionality of the software is available if you have a license key (purchased through the official website).

The demand for plugins that “cut” annoying online advertising is steadily growing. According to a recent report from Adobe and PageFair, custom browser extensions are now used by over 200 million people worldwide, up 41% from 2014. Read about the five best browser add-ons that will help hide annoying banners, pop-ups and other annoying ads in the Vestey.Hi-tech collection.

Not all advertising is bad. “Internet bugs” that collect information about the user’s activity without his knowledge, flashing and pop-up windows that interfere with or distract from reading, as well as banners with “bad” code that embed cookies into the browser to track movements deserve unambiguous blocking. visitors from site to site. However, sometimes running ads is the only way to earn money as an independent resource. So, if the ads are harmless and do not bother you, it would be a good idea to support the authors of your favorite sites and include them in the white list.

Before installing a blocker, we recommend enabling the Do Not Track (DNT) feature in your browser. This will let the site know that you do not want to be tracked by behavioral cookies that collect information about pages visited, online purchases, search engine queries, etc. Enabling this setting, however, does not mean that sites will immediately stop bothering you with “targeted” advertising. For now, DNT is advisory in nature. It only informs sites that users want to stop tracking them, but does not provide any guarantees that advertisers will comply with this request.

Chrome: open "Settings" → on the screen that opens, follow the link "Show additional settings" (below) → in the "Personal data" section, check the box next to "Send tracking denial with outgoing traffic."

Firefox: Go to “Settings” → select the “Privacy” tab and check the radio button next to “Tell sites that I don’t want to be tracked.”

Internet Explorer: "Settings" → "Security" → "Send Do Not Track requests" → click on the "Enable" button.

Opera: "Settings" → "Privacy and Security" section → check "Send a Do Not Track request with data."

Safari: "Settings" → go to the "Privacy" tab → and check the box next to "Prevent websites from tracking me."

AdBlock Plus

ABP is the most popular and ubiquitous AD blocker, with versions for both desktop and mobile devices. According to statistics from the startup Eyeo, based in Cologne (Germany), their product is regularly used by over 60 million people around the world. ABP can block anything from banners and pop-ups, hidden cookies and other tracking tools, suspicious domains, social media buttons and widgets, and video ads on YouTube or Facebook.

It is also possible to create your own lists of filters and allowed domains. ABP is available as an extension in all popular browsers: Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari, Maxthon, also in Yandex.Browser and on Android devices.

Once installed, ABP will ask what content other than ads should be blocked. Optionally, the extension can deny access to potentially malicious domains, cut out spying cookies and social media buttons that can also monitor user behavior.

ABP has one feature - the so-called “acceptable” or “acceptable advertising”. Developers do not hide the fact that they receive payment from large partners (including Google, Amazon, eHow, Yandex and others) for being included in the white list. Additionally, to support independent creators, ABP can run ads on smaller sites and blogs for free. However, filters are allowed to bypass “no more than 10% of companies,” and users always have the option to completely limit any advertising. This can be done by unchecking the box next to "Allow some unobtrusive advertising" in the add-on settings.

Ghostery

The Ghostery plugin specializes in getting rid of Internet bugs rather than advertising. To date, the extension (the developers themselves call it a “privacy tool”) is aware of the existence of over 2 thousand trackers that can secretly collect information about user activity.

Disconnect

Disconnect's audience is relatively small (about a million users), and the add-on itself does not have a very beautiful interface, but it copes with its tasks. It also has a number of unique functions. For example, Disconnect clearly shows in the form of an interactive map which sites receive notifications that you have visited a partner resource.

In addition, the plugin displays how much Internet traffic has been saved and how much web page loading has increased. Overall, Disconnect is the type of program that you can simply “turn on and forget.” If some elements stop working (YouTube videos, Flickr photos), or the site is not displayed correctly, you can always click on the icon with the letter D and unblock individual scripts.

Disconnect does not have such flexible settings as Ghostery or uBlock. For example, you cannot see the blacklist of all bugs - it is created by the company itself. The extension is available in Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

Hello! Nowadays, the problem of viruses is not very acute - most users already generally understand what can be opened and what is highly discouraged... and modern Windows 10 is already less vulnerable to malware. And what do most users use a computer for? — surf the Internet and watch a movie. But with browsers, not everything is so simple, so the issue of blocking ads in the browser is more relevant than ever before.

If you are interested in the issue of ad blocking... or you have started to notice ads where there were never any (and even worse if advertising is already popping up in the browser), then I can tell you with confidence that you are not alone, and I will try to explain to you how to get rid of this illness.

How to block ads in your browser - simple steps to a clean Internet

• Advertising, which was deliberately installed by the site owner, is the most common and easiest method of advertising to block.
• Crashing, infuriating advertising on all sites... pop-up windows, spontaneous opening of the browser, various casinos and other nonsense - it is much more difficult to treat, but it’s possible (the problem is that your computer is showing you ads)

Initially, I want to show the basic setting of ad blocking in the browser (if this does not help, then you most likely have advertising modules or AdWare as they are called).

Recognizing AdWare is quite simple - it is a pop-up flashy advertisement in the browser on all pages (for example, on Yandex a Vulcan casino may be advertised or a browser with advertising may open spontaneously).

It’s clear that this is not normal... so I want to tell you about a method for blocking Yandex Browser (now I use it myself and can recommend it to you). In the instructions we will consider universal options that are suitable even for Internet Explorer or EDGE. Let's look at both paid and free extensions - don't switch, it will be interesting!

How to remove advertising in the Yandex browser

Do you know why I like the Yandex browser? — it contains a lot of useful things for a Russian-speaking user. In addition, there is a built-in ability to filter ads using the third-party service AdGuard (I previously used AdBlock Plus, but after switching from Firefox to Ya.Browser there is no point in installing a third-party extension). This extension can be turned on simply - open the menu and go to “Add-ons”... and turn on the “Adguard” extension.

By default, advertising from Yandex and Google will not be blocked (and even normal advertising there, sometimes even useful) - whether to disable it or not is up to you. On my own behalf, I would like to add that sometimes this is the only way for the author of a resource to earn money... after all, you need to pay for hosting, spend time writing posts like this one. Well, monetization is a great motivation to develop and fill your resource.

Well, that was a small lyrical digression - you can go to the extension settings and disable the “Allow search advertising and sites’ own promotions” option. This way you will completely disable all advertising on websites known to the extension.

ADGUARD is an excellent ad blocker for any browser

Since we are talking about ad blocking, it would be a crime not to talk about the wonderful AdGuard application. What if I told you that you can block ads not only in the browser, but also in various applications where they are often found? Skype, Viber, uTorrent - all these programs are popular and constantly annoying with ads, but AdGuard will automatically remove them all. You can download it from the official website...

AdGuard deserves a separate note, which I plan to write in the future, but for now a short overview of the capabilities

Installation is the same as everywhere else, nothing new was invented... however, I would advise not to install recommended products (well, if we want, we’ll install it ourselves, I don’t like this intrusiveness)

What can I tell you about the best application for blocking ads on your computer? Many people are looking for ways to disable advertising on Skype or torrent, delve into the code, edit something there - this is all real and tested in practice... but you can just install AdGuard and it will automatically block ads in all popular applications - isn’t it beautiful?!

The Parental Control feature seemed useful. I don’t know what filters this works on - but the joke is not in blocking porn sites and other bad resources... but in the inability to even find them in the search.

But of course, it is not without its drawbacks - the application is paid, but its price does not exceed the cost of pizza... support the developers, do not bother with torrents! And don’t forget - the AdGuard application is used to block ads; it will not help against viruses. You can use a good antivirus for free against all evil spirits.

How to remove ads in Google Chrome browser and other browsers

Now let's move on to the easiest way to get rid of ads in the browser - I used this extension until I switched to Yandex Browser with the AdGuard extension. Suitable for any browser (or almost, all known to me are supported) - just go to the official website of the extension...

I’ll tell you using Google Chrome as an example (but everything is similar for any other - be it Firefox or Opera) - find the largest button “Install for YOUR_BROWSER”. Agree with the installation of the extension and restart your web browser - the lion's share of advertising on sites will disappear.

How to remove ads in the browser? — We choose the best

If you are constantly seeing ads pop up in your browser, and all the methods described above have not corrected the situation, then you most likely have a malicious program on your computer, a browser extension, or the system settings have been changed. The whole problem with this infection is that antiviruses don’t see them, in fact it doesn’t harm the computer... but it infuriates the user. Let's start with disassembling pop-up advertising in the browser.

How to remove pop-up ads automatically

With the spread of this infection, it is not surprising that entire companies gradually began to appear producing applications to combat this advertising ransomware. Thanks to them, most advertising inserts are treated automatically and require virtually no user intervention - I highly recommend you use them.

AdwCleaner - an easy way to remove ads from your computer

In order not to bother you too much and not to bother you with places in the Windows system that are unclear to the average user, I suggest initially trying to remove pop-up ads in the browser automatically. There are many software products for removing AdWare, but my experience tells me to stick with AdwCleaner - in my opinion, the best solution to remove all known extensions from any browser.

Download only from !OFFICIAL site and nowhere else! After launching the application, click “Scan” and wait for the end of the search for harmful programs... check that the results do not contain anything unnecessary and click clean - check after rebooting.

Please note that AdvCleaner also considers all programs from Mail.RU to be malicious. If you use any Mail Agent, do not forget to remove it from the purge list.

HitmanPro is a good way to remove pop-up ads in your browser

A small utility from Malwarebytes, Hitman Pro will find most malware on your computer and can remove them. The application is paid, but with a test period - it will be more useful than ever for us for a one-time cleaning. As usual, download from the official website of the program.

To avoid installing the program on your computer, use the “I’m going to scan the system only once” option. In this case, we will immediately start scanning the operating system for unwanted programs.

As you can see, malware was found in our system (in our example it is a system activator, but it will do for the example) - just click “Next” to clear the found threats.

Remember I wrote that the application is paid? - so, to clean the system, you can activate a free license... click the appropriate button and enter your email to issue you a temporary license.

After cleaning, you should restart your computer and check whether our problem with pop-up advertising inserts has been resolved or not.

Removed pop-up ads in the browser - the Internet does not work

An unpleasant situation happens - you removed pop-ups and ads in your browser and now the Internet does not work. The browser reports that it is unable to connect to the proxy server. The problem is quite common, but has an elementary solution.

Most likely, the left DNS server was used, and since we removed the malicious application - using DNS data turned out to be impossible and useless - you just need to reset the settings to standard

To solve the problem with the error “Cannot connect to the proxy server,” we need to go to the “Control Panel,” open the “Network and Internet” section and in the “Browser Options” category, select “Manage browser settings.”

Make sure that the “Use a proxy server for local connections” checkbox is unchecked and that the “Automatic detection of parameters” option is active.

If the steps taken did not give the desired result, write in the comments, we’ll try to figure out the problem together.

How to remove pop-up ads in your browser manually

If all the methods described above to get rid of viral advertising in the browser did not help, then extreme measures remain - let’s try to fix the situation manually.

Task Scheduler - if ads pop up in the browser

The trend of 2017 is not a new frameless iPhone, but a problem of users who periodically have ads popping up in their browser... and not a single program sees them. I first encountered this species at the end of 2016 (and to be honest, for a very long time I could not understand what the problem was). The situation is as follows: an advertising site periodically opened, even if the browser was closed.

As it turned out, the malware used a task scheduler and simply periodically launched a task - launch the browser at the required time interval and open the site it needed in it (! brilliant).

To improve the health of our system, let’s open the task scheduler and delete it from there...

Open the Start menu and type “Task Scheduler” - find it in the search list and open it. Alternatively, press WIN + R on your keyboard and type taskschd.msc

In one of the tasks, you will probably see the path to the browser with a postscript in the form of a site that constantly opens for you - you should delete it (right-click on the task - delete). There are situations when different sites open all the time - in this case, one site opens, and then redirects to one of many (you just don’t have time to notice it) - just delete dubious tasks with additions to the path to the browser file.

What to do if advertising appears in the browser? — Disable extensions

You can clear your browser of ads and pop-ups simply by disabling the bad extension. Not long ago I installed a browser add-on that allowed me to watch torrents online... everything was great until I noticed that advertising appeared where there had never been one. Unfortunately, I did not notice this right away and therefore the solitaire did not work out right away - it helped that the extension was not installed in another browser and there were no left-handed advertisements there.

I just disabled the browser add-on and the ads disappeared. Try going to the list of extensions:

• For Yandex Browser this is Settings > Add-ons (in the same place where you enabled AdGuard)
• For Google Chrome - Settings > More tools > Extensions

Disable all extensions one by one until the ads stop appearing. This way you will identify a malicious extension - you need to remove it and forget about it forever.

Unfortunately, this point is often ignored, but it is one of the most common. You can’t trust anyone... there are often cases in which the extension that everyone is familiar with starts telling us all sorts of nasty things. We trust him, why do we need to turn him off and check him?! We will look in the place where it is not there... but until the last minute we will not try to simply turn it off for a minute and check.

The Hosts file is the reason for advertising in the browser

Many Adware use the Windows system hosts file to display advertisements. Currently, it is practically not used by advertising malware - usually left-handed Google addresses are registered there or social networks are replaced.

You can correct the hosts file using notepad (which, by the way, must be opened as an administrator, otherwise you will not be able to save changes in it). It is necessary to delete all lines that are under the lines starting with a hash.

Why do ads pop up in the browser? — Editing shortcuts

If, after completing all the steps described above, advertising starts only when you launch the browser itself, then it’s time to pay attention to program shortcuts. In the shortcut properties, delete everything that is outside the quotes (usually the address of the annoying site)... and create new shortcuts for the browser.

This method is incredibly simple, but many people overlook it. In my practice, this option of pop-up advertising occurs very often, so do not underestimate it.

Conclusions about pop-up advertising in the browser and blocking it

Constantly popping up ads in your browser can be very annoying, so be careful when installing different applications and try to use official download sites to minimize the possibility of picking up something unusual, but extremely unpleasant.

I hope this small instruction was useful to you (and it is really small - I described only a small part of the problem areas, but they are the most common) and you were able to defeat advertising in the browser. If something doesn’t work out, write in the comments, we’ll figure it out together!