Hitware Popup Killer Lite

This free pop-up blocker takes care of its business but omits a few common perks found in similar applications. Hitware Popup Killer Lite’s feature set is rather anemic. You can choose to allow pop-ups from certain sites by manually adding their URLs to a whitelist, but you can’t do so via a quick hot-key combination. Also, although the app can alert you to blocked ads by playing a sound or flashing in your taskbar, you won’t find a log file for viewing a list of eliminated pop-ups. The program tackles just about all standard pop-ups with ease, although it can’t put down Flash or banner ads. Still, since this app’s performance is mostly good and it doesn’t cost anything, we can see how it will be an attractive option to Web surfers who just need a pop-up blocker and nothing else.

Hitware Popup Killer Lite is an intelligent pop-up- and pop-under-ad killer. Running in the system tray, it quietly eliminates all unwanted ads even before they appear and prevents them from stealing bandwidth or locking up your browser. You can choose to be notified via an animated tray icon and/or sound whenever a pop-up window is closed.

The program also can help you get rid of annoying IP-based messenger pop-up ads. These pop-ups abuse the Messenger Service, which is intended to send text messages across a network, using the IP address of the computer. They can appear as a dialog box on your desktop if you have the Messenger Service enabled and are not using a firewall. Hitware Popup Killer Lite will display the current status of the Messenger Service and allows you to enable or disable the service with a simple click. Version 3.1.1 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.