Stopzilla blocks pop-ups and adware quickly and intelligently.

Stopzilla! blocks pop-ups and adware quickly and intelligently.

As pop-ups and adware programs find new ways to hijack your computer, it's become increasingly difficult to find one tool that does everything. Some do an adequate job blocking traditional ads that open in a new window, but leave you twisting in the wind when it comes to nasty spyware programs that monopolize the real estate on your desktop from deep within the Windows registry.

Stopzilla! is a one-stop answer to hostile ad software that we first introduced you to last June. Unlike other popular ad-removal programs, such as SpyBot or Lavasoft's Ad-Aware, which seek and destroy malicious programs lurking in your computer, Stopzilla actively squashes pop-ups and other sneaky forms of advertising before they can materialize. It also prohibits known advertising agents from taking root in your computer, making Web browsing slightly less hazardous.

Two things make Stopzilla! unique. While free pop-up killers like the Google Toolbar or the built-in blocking features of Mozilla catch most ads, Stopzilla! neutralizes nearly all of them. It also distinguishes between an ad window and user-generated pop-ups, so you don't have to keep switching the software on and off to see Instant Message and information windows.

After a simple installation, setup is easy and straightforward. By right-clicking a system tray icon, you can maintain your Black List, clear all cookies, and empty your history. The one drawback is that Stopzilla! works only in Internet Explorer; while the company has announced plans to introduce wider compatibility in the next major release, Mozilla and Firefox users are out of luck for now.

If you curse adware and don't mind shedding some cash to end the pop-up plague, Stopzilla! is a great choice. It's a top-shelf program that delivers where freeware programs fall short.

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