Who’s seen the new AOL commercial for their built-in popup blocker? It starts out with a woman in a swimming pool with a bikini on. She swims to one end of the pool where there is a set of stairs coming out of the water. She begins to climb out of the pool, but just before her chest comes out of the water a popup window comes onto the screen. Then, as she continues to climb out of the water, popups appear over other sensitive areas of her body until there are so many popups all you can see is her head and some of the background. Then, a mouse pointer comes on the screen and begins to close the popups, and you can just barely see her behind there putting on a towel. By the time all the popups are closed she’s got the towel completely covering herself. Then, an announcer says, “Annoying, isn’t it?”
This commercial bugs me. I get calls every day from people trying to use ContentWatch’s PopupProtect software to stop pornographic popups from appearing on their computers. Here AOL is actually trying to convince us that we should buy their newest version of AOL so we can block the popups that obstruct our view of all the porn. Doesn’t AOL have parental controls built in? What kind of double-standard is this?