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Your browser in intentionally being set to use about:blank as the startup page? To avoid seeing these types of popups, you can use a pop-up blocker, which are bundled in most browsers.
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These types of popups are not a problem and you can just close them.
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Occasionally, though, these about:blank popups will not be properly changed to an advertisement, and visitors will be left with these blank popups that have the address of about:blank. After a few seconds, javascript will use that page to redirect you to one of the site's advertising partners. On many of these sites, when you click on the play button for a video, in addition to playing the video, it will also open a popup that shows the about:blank address. The most common sites that display popups that are labeled about:blank are adult video sites. What causes about:blank popups? Sites that use about:blank popups for advertising. I have outlined the various ways that about:blank may be shown in a browser below and suggestions on how to resolve them below. The about:blank page is not malicious in any way, but as it is commonly used by popup advertisers and adware, people may become concerned when they see them. When a browser navigates to this address it simply displays a blank page, which can then be used by extensions or a scripting language like Javascript to add further output. While all browsers can add any "about" addresses that they wish to their browser, one URI that almost all browsers use is the "about:blank" address. The about identifier, which can be typed into a browser's address bar, is meant to be used to access a browser's internal information such as settings, resource usage, jokes, Easter eggs, or any other information output a browser developer wants to add. What are About:Blank pages?Īll modern browsers, which include Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, & Safari, support a Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) URI, or Uniform Resource Identifier, scheme called " about". Below I will go into more detail about what About:Blank pages are, what causes them to be displayed, and then suggestions on resolving the display of these types of popups or alerts.
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