Recently, a newsgroup visitor to my site
(http://www.looknseephoto.com) reported that he experienced a lot of
pop-ups when visiting this site.  Other people on the newsgroup
replied, indicating that they did not experience pop-ups there.

Let me assure you:  there are no pop-ups associated with my site!

After checking with some tech gurus, I found that some pop-ups are
sneaky -- they don't pop up immediately; rather, they wait until you
surf to a few more pages before they pop up.  That way, it is not
immediately clear where you picked up the pop up.

Also, since there are no pop-ups on this site and since other people
didn't experience pop-ups here, it is more probable that the victim
picked up some adware along the way.

The Good News:  Unlike e-mail spam, there are some very effective ways
to protect yourself from pop-ups, adware, and spybots.  

Here's What You Can Do:  
    Get yourself a pop-up blocker.  Some ISPs (like mine, Earthlink)
    offer pop-up blockers to their customers.  Earthlink's pop-up
    blocker hasn't failed me yet.  If your ISP doesn't offer a pop-up
    blocker, you can do an Internet search.  I'm told that Google has
    an excellent blocker that comes along with an add-on search
    window for your browser.  Alternatively, some browsers, like
    Mozilla, have pop-up blockers built in.  These blockers will stop
    pop-ups cold.

    Get that adware & spybots off your computer.  There are two
    applications that are free & very popular for this purpose:

         Adaware  (http://www.lavasoft.de)
         Spybot Search & Destroy (http://security.kolla.de/)

    Follow the instructions with these applications, keep the
    definitions up date, and run them often (2-4 times a month).  
    Run both -- each catches bad guys that the other misses.