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DEMO: Pop-Up Blockers

Browser pop-ups and redirects can be used for legitimate purposes, but they are also common vectors for advertising abuse and scam sites. This content covers how pop-up and redirect permissions work in browser settings and how to configure exceptions for trusted or blocked sites.

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About this video

Pop-ups and redirects are two distinct browser behaviors that were once standard features of the web but became significant security and usability concerns as they were increasingly exploited for advertising and fraud. A pop-up is a secondary window that loads on top of the current page, often used to promote content or collect sign-ups, while a redirect silently sends the user to a different site entirely — sometimes a malicious or fraudulent one — without any deliberate action on their part. Because of these risks, browsers now block both behaviors by default. Browser site settings provide granular control over how pop-ups and redirects are handled. The default configuration prevents all sites from triggering either behavior, which is the recommended setting for most users and environments. When a specific trusted site requires pop-up or redirect functionality, an exception can be added to an allowlist, permitting that domain while keeping the block in place for all others. The reverse configuration — allowing pop-ups and redirects globally and then blocking specific sites — is also technically possible but is not a practical or secure approach. Managing exceptions from a default-allow posture requires identifying and blocking every problematic site individually, which is not scalable. Maintaining the default-deny setting and creating targeted exceptions for known, trusted domains is the more secure and manageable strategy.

What you'll learn

What's covered

Browser Popups & Redirects

Aligned to

CompTIA Tech+
3.5 Given a scenario, configure and use web browsers.
CompTIA A+ Core 2
2.10 Given a scenario, install and configure browsers and relevant security settings.

Key terms

Popup
A browser window or overlay that appears on top of a webpage, commonly used for advertising or scams, which can be blocked or allowed through browser settings.
Redirect
The automatic sending of a user from one website to another without their explicit permission, which can be exploited to route users to malicious or scam sites.
Malware
Software specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to a system.
Site-Specific Exception
A browser configuration setting that allows or blocks popups and redirects for individual specified websites, overriding the default global setting.

Topics

Browser Security Pop Up Blockers Browser Settings Web Browsing Malicious Redirects Cybersecurity

Transcript

Pop-Ups and Redirects

One thing that was really handy in the past were these pop-ups that would happen on your screen. What would happen is you would go to a site, and then when you wanted to access certain information you'd click on it and something would pop up. At some point in time, people figured out, well, let's pop up things like advertisements or scams. And then it became real problematic, and so then we wanted to start blocking these pop-ups. Now, there are times that we do need to use these pop-ups for certain sites, where other times we just want to turn this off and not use it at all, because it will annoy us and cause problems.

We're actually going to be talking about two things: pop-ups and redirects. Let's say I go to a site — I'm just going to use techknowsurge.com. If I were to go to this site and then something pops up on this site, that's called a pop-up. So it'd be another window that comes over the top of this window right here. Usually that's done for some sort of advertising, or maybe we want to advertise this newsletter and so we have a pop-up there for the newsletter. The idea though is to get something in front of you, so that's why it's used for advertising a lot.

A redirect would mean that once I hit the site, it's going to send me to another site without my permission, or possibly without my permission. It'll just send me to another site, it'll redirect me. That's problematic, because some people will redirect you to maybe a scammer site, and that's problematic because we don't want to be scammed and we don't want to be going to a scammer site.

Adjusting the Pop-Up Settings

So what we can do here is we can adjust the pop-up settings. Let's go into the settings and let's take a look at these pop-up settings. I just like to do search, so that way we can quickly find it. It's under site settings, so we're going to go under site settings and under pop-ups and redirects.

Right now, what it's doing by default is, don't allow sites to send pop-ups or use redirects. So right now it's not acceptable. If we want to make an exception — let's say we want to make an exception to techknowsurge.com — we can click on this add, and I'm clicking on it for this "allowed to send". So we're on "don't allow sites" except for those that are following this list. So I'm going to add this and click on add, and now it's in there.

We possibly may want to think about, in certain circumstances, saying sites can send pop-ups and redirects. If that's the case right there, and there is a certain site we don't want to have a pop-up, then we can add that to here. So now let's say we don't want Facebook, maybe facebook.com — then everything is allowed to have pop-ups except for Facebook, everything, all the sites, are allowed to redirect except for Facebook.

And that's not the way we want to set this up. For the most part we probably want to use the defaults: don't allow sites to send.

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