All browsers have popups blocked, and am also using popup blocking extensions.- in FF, Popup Blocker (Strict) and Popup Blocker Ultimate



But there are multiple sites that pop-up unwelcome videos - that drive me nuts.


How do I stop them, particularly in Firefox?

Do you mean actual additional windows with videos or just videos that start in the main window? I use the built in pop-up blockers on my browser (Safari) and have never had a pop up. Videos on the main page, yes, and which are very annoying, but a pop-up blocker won't stop those unless they are in a separate window.

I can't remember the last time I saw an unwanted popup, or even the infobar that says "a popup was blocked".

Probably because the blocklists used by uBlock Origin is stopping them.

I mean those 2 x 3 little videos that popup somewhere on the screen when you scroll down the page from the video that was blocked.

e.g. canada.com/news - huffpost, weathernetwork - lots more

I can stop them playing, but I don't want to be harassed by these things

This aren't pop ups, those are just videos/ads, whatever. I hate those as well. I normally engage my DNS black hole on my firewall but the wife complains when she can't click on ads. I have tried to explain it to her a bunch of times but she doesn't get it so I gave up...

Do you mean I could need a raspberry-pi router?

Maybe - my DNS black hole software is built into my firewall but I need to test if I turn it on, do the videos get blocked. It depends on (probably), what you block as well. It looks to be configurable via lists but I haven't really dug into it.

A "pi-hole" will do the same thing.

Privacy Badger, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, and more. You may need to train them, because some sites need to be allowed in order to work correctly, and will be broken until you whitelist them. Oherwise, they work well. I've never heard of the ones mentioned, perhaps from the Windows world.

Sounds like a bug - maybe you need to upgrade to a newer version?

Failing that, what about switching the relevant hostnames to point at a local server and generate fake adverts that are not interesting?

Upgrading is usually very expensive, and can be messy. I don't generally recommend it. Working out the bugs is usually cheaper and easier, but can still be costly, both in money and ego. But some users have a surfeit of both.

Sorry, I did not explain - my firewall (pfsense, Netgate) has a built in module to do "pi-hole" like DNS black hole functionality. When I enable it, my wife complains because the ads she likes to click on are gone...the bug is the wife, not the firewall

I end up disabling the module to make her happy. I do not know if this module also blocks those annoying videos so I need to test that.

Yeah, that was the joke.


If the OP wants to post a non-hyperlinked example (e.g. use code block) of an offending site then people here can confirm whether it's blocked by their extensions/firewalls/etc.

Ah, my problem is much like Sheldon's on Big Bang Theory, in that I don't catch sarcasm sometimes

These are the worst. A local news station is a huge fan of these video popups. You can click on the "||" to stop them from playing but most of them don't include an "X" to eliminate them completely. They just sit there obscuring so much of the browser window that the remainder of the page is pretty much unreadable (unless you read the text one line at a time because that's all you're able to see ).

The web sites don't seem to care. They add these completely annoying videos but don't include a feedback link so you can ask them for a means to disable them. A pox (and a virulent one at that) on the web developer that came up with these.

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My post was also a joke, in response to boughtonp's. Upgrading the wife can be problematic.

Both Privacy Badger and DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials block almost all ads, including the small videos. I'm frankly amazed that more people don't seem to know about them.