Ad Blocking with Norton Internet Security or Norton Personal Firewall 2003

Situation:
You have Norton Internet Security (NIS) 2003, Norton Internet Security Professional (NIS Pro) 2003, or Norton Personal Firewall (NPF) 2003 installed. You want to know how to enable or disable Ad Blocking and the Pop-up and Pop-under features.

Solution:
The Ad Blocking feature is now available in NIS, NIS Pro, and NPF 2003. This feature is not available in earlier versions of Norton Personal Firewall.

What the Ad Blocking feature does:

Speeds up your Web surfing capability by eliminating banner ads and other slow-loading or intrusive content
Blocks ads made with Macromedia Flash
Prevent sites from opening pop-up or pop-under ad windows
Blocks ads by preventing your Web browser from displaying specific HTML strings
Has Configure Ad Blocking settings for each user (Must have Supervisor rights)

What the Ad Blocking feature does not do:

Block all advertisements on the Internet
Block text-based or script-based advertisements

How to enable or disable Ad Blocking and the Pop-up and Pop-under features

NOTE: You must have NIS Supervisor rights to modify these settings.

Open NIS or NPF.
Click Status & Settings.
Double-click Ad Blocking.
Choose the Ad Blocking Settings for account. This step does not apply to NPF 2003. See illustration below.
Check or uncheck Turn on Ad Blocking.
Check or uncheck Turn on Popup Window Blocking. (This feature also applies to Pop-Under windows.)
Click OK.

What to do if ads continue to display
If the Ad Blocking feature has been enabled and some ads continue to appear, you need to use the Ad Trashcan feature to remove the ad. Ad Trashcan can be opened by clicking the Ad Trashcan button in the Ad Blocking screen (see illustration above) or by double-clicking the Alert Tracker icon (the half-globe icon located along the right side of the monitor) then clicking Ad Trashcan.

To attempt to remove the ad, follow the instructions in the Ad Trashcan window based on which browser you are using. If you followed the instructions to remove an ad and the ad displays a different ad, then it is a rotating ad and cannot be removed. If the ad does not disappear after dragging it to the trashcan, then it could be hard coded and cannot be removed. Some advertisers make it difficult to remove their ads. Because of this, there are some ads that cannot be blocked by the NIS or NPF Ad Blocking feature. There is not much more Symantec can do to remove the ad.