even when I log onto my on-line banking now, certain words such as "mortgage" and "credit" are underlined in green, and before long adverts appear for nemerous credit lenders. This is only one example of the many irritating pop-ups that appear, I get many more for ringtones etc, and also porn sites. Any recommendations?

jt, June 2004

If you have Msn messenger 6.2, you can actually set the msn toolbar to block any pop-ups... and it's free!!

Hales, August 2004

You almost certainly have spyware that has hijacking capabilities. Some of these little programs track what websites you're at and try to match the subject matter with popups that are related. They also change the settings in your browser and Windows programs (called system registry).

Download "AdAware" and "Spybot S&D". I run both occasionally or whenever I have a problem and they are very effective and do not negatively affect the performance of my machine. Another powerful tool is "HijackThis" which will scan your registry when you ask it to and list any suspected modifications to the registry. It is possible to do damage to the normal function of your registry if you modify the wrong things though so be very sure before you tinker.

Finally, there are techies out there who will tell you which things to remove with "HijackThis" ("HT") if you send them a list of the HT results.

Ryan, June 2004

Also, download 'Mozilla Firefox' search google for it and use as your Internet browser. It's great at blocking pop-ups. You should keep another browser installed though for when you're using a site that needs pop-ups.

micro, June 2004

I would download and run tools like "Ad-aware" "Spybot". These will scan your PC and help you remove any trojans which may be running. You'll find these at www.download.com

Pete Kayle, June 2004