German language popup window adverts

Yes. I live in Germany. I surf the web through a German host. But I can't read German and I spend little time on German sites.

Then how come when I close out my surfing of MSNBC, Hotmail, TT, Google and other harmless sites I get advertisements in German?!!? I am not saying that any of these have exit popups (those are a specific breed) but somehow the little advertisements within some pages are German and there are certainly some new windows that are the stand alone kind.

I delete my cookies, erase internet files and offline content, etc. I am not using wireless web LAN but am wired to the wall so I don't think I am getting hijacked or blue-toothed. I use spybot search and destroy too and the firewall is turned on.

Surely the local websites like mr.lodge or Marienplatz Webcam aren't malicious and placing undeleteable cookies on my computer when I least expect it.

Even Google is not sacred. I use google.com as my home page. Sometimes it comes up as google.DE when 10 minutes before it was .COM? When I type in www.google.COM it automatically goes to www.google.DE. I type it in again and it returns to .DE I then click on the button "google in English" and it corrects itself. Not only that, Google in the US never said "go to Google Deutschland" in the choices. Over here it does!

Sick of it.

They guess your location from your IP address.
I used to work for a Swedish company (here in Munich), and the internet proxy was in Sweden. I used to get pop-ups in Swedish.

EDIT: To block the pop-ups try something like Proxomitron or another filtering program (there are a few listed on that link).

I use Crazy Browserand the XP firewall. Seems to block everything.

this little fellah will stop pretty much all pop-ups...the google toolbar

caution: it may also stop pop-ups you want (for example on www.wetter.de) but if you hit the blocker button when you havee that particular page up it will allows pop-ups from that page anytime you open it...

Proxomitron

It's dead!!!

My $0.02. Ditch Internet Explorer entirely and get Firefox 0.8 from mozilla.com. It is a vastly superior browser in every way but requires a bit of configuration when you first install it (go for the tabbed browsing - very nice). Opera is good too (opera.com).

The nice thing about these browsers is that they have built-in pop-up blocking, google search field, etc.

I only use IE these days if I'm streaming audio - I can't get that to work with any other browser.

Check also your language settings in Internet Explorer ("Tools"-Internet Options"- "Language" ) - if you have German as one of your languages (or high up the list) some websites use this to target you...

The new Google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com/) is nice bar that not only allows you to select WHICH Google site you use to search, but also kills popups very well.

YL6

@Melodia
Yes, but if you actually bother to read the rest of the page you will see:

I don't want to do something too drastic like install a new browser.
I also don't want another toolbar to be visible because it takes up another 5% of the screen.
Power IE aka Crazy Browser and the Google toolbar look like they might be effective, but hard to make invisible. Can you integrate those into the existing "buttons" bar or make them be hidden once installed?

Want want want. I know. Beggars can't be choosy.

FireFox gets my vote too. Installing a new browser isnt so drastic. You get a lot more advantages apart from pop-up blocking. Tabs for example. After getting used to tabs I just cant use IE anymore. You can get extensions that totally block out banner ads and everything too. Alternatively disabling javascript might work in many cases.

It's not always your IP address that gives your location away, for some sites it's the OS. Go to Control Panel , click the country code icon and select English (US) as your default local setting instead of Germany.