How to stop these annoying popup advertisements?

**resander** · August 8th, 2014

Have been using Ubuntu and Firefox for about 7 years (now on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS).

Quite recently I have been annoyed and disturbed by popups that I cannot move, close and get rid of. They just sit there and block the view. There is always a popup on the left-hand side with caption 'Recently Bought' showing goods that I would never dream of buying, like an accordion (hate the sound), Stainless microwave (already have a white goods micro), a Trixie Dog Kennel (have no dog) etc. There is also always a popup on the right-hand side with Caption 'Hot Deals'. All these popups have 'Powered by Shop Smart®' displayed in the lower right corner, but no X close button.

I get these popups when going to online ASDA, Tesco, Sainsbury, Amazon, Ebay and even an online overseas newspaper and probably many other too.

How do I stop these, ideally permanently?

Cannot recall having seen other popups, but would be nice to be able to block all popups. How?

**Jesse_Campton** · August 8th, 2014

Have you tried another browser such as Chromium? Do you get the pop-ups? Save your bookmarks and such and reinstall Firefox? I would delete the Firefox folder before reinstalling though, just to be sure.

**Polydorus** · August 8th, 2014

Have you tried installing the extensions Adblock Plus and NoScript for Firefox?

**buzzingrobot** · August 8th, 2014

A quick Google finds several explanations of how to stop this on Windows (which might be extrapolated to Linux) and explanations that Smart Shop is legitimate but the ads are malicously triggered by third parties to generate money.

As suggested, backup bookmarks and anything else you want to preserve. Then, purge Firefox (apt-get purge Firefox). Then, check if the ".mozilla/firefox" directory in your home directory has been deleted. If not, delete it manually. Reinstall Firefox.

**tgalati4** · August 8th, 2014

Try installing Ad Block Edge. It's possible that Smart Shop is using an exploit in Ad Block Plus that allows "acceptable ads".

**resander** · August 9th, 2014

The Chrome browser did not bring up any popups for the same files, so the culprit is Firefox.

Removed and reinstalled Firefox from the Ubuntu Software Centre on the Applications menu and this stopped the popups. Also installed the AdBlock Plus and NOSCRIPT addons via the Add-Ons manager in Firefox. Never used these before.

Many thanks for kind advice.
P.S. I have not seen any ad-popups before when using Ubuntu+Firefox as far as can remember. I don't click links in emails and visit dodgy websites, so what could have caused this infection?

**Jesse_Campton** · August 9th, 2014

Welcome and please mark this thread as solved.

**phedup** · February 19th, 2015

[QUOTE=resander;13094002] "The Chrome browser did not bring up any popups for the same files, so the culprit is Firefox."

Hi Resander,

Though this thread is closed, I wanted to let folks know that these lower right hand corner pop ups DO occur frequently for me in Chrome. (Ubuntu 14.4 user.)