It was only a matter of time before the intrusion-style advertisers figured out a way to circumvent Firefox’s pop-up blocker. I noticed pop-up ads showing up on Drudge a while back, after not seeing a single pop-up in the two years I’ve been using Firefox. Apparently Drudge and other websites have been exploiting a feature of Flash to launch the ads.
Now, it’s back to the drawing board for the exploitationists. C-Net is reporting that a new Firefox extension is available to patch the mechanism that allows for Flash pop-ups. I just installed the extension and it worked beautifully on Drudge.
UPDATE: After about a day of using this extension, I’ve reluctantly turned it off. Don’t get me wrong, the extension does impeccably well against stopping pop-ups. The problem is that it stops all pop-ups, even the ones you explicitly ask for. When I found I couldn’t even open links which spawned new windows, I knew I was in trouble. Hopefully there will be a more customizable extension available in the near future.