Failure in the exemption of the AT&T Global Network home page in Norton Internet Security Ad Blocking component
Theodore Stathopoulos
My IBM ThinkPad T42p laptop PC has come with Windows XP Professional and
Norton AntiVirus 2004 preinstalled by IBM.
I have subsequently bought Norton Internet Security 2004 and installed it on
top of the existing version of Norton AntiVirus 2004 which came preloaded by
IBM on my machine without uninstalling it first in order to upgrade to
Norton Internet Security 2004.
This upgrade procedure was successfully completed and Norton Internet
Security 2004 is, without any doubt, working perfectly well on my system.
I have, however, decided to write to you as I need your help with regard to
the following problem:
The AT&T Global Network homepage at http://www.attbusiness.net has three
advertising banners as you can easily see if you load the page having the Ad
Blocking component of Norton Internet Security 2004 turned off because it is
exactly and normally Ad Blocking what does not allow them to appear when it
is enabled.
As it is specifically only for this and not for any other webpage that I
would like all these three advertising banners to show every time I load the
page, I have very hard tried to create a rule in order to include it in the
Ad Blocking software of Norton Internet Security as an exception as I do not
want to universally have it turned off because then it will not block ads on
all other webpages, either.
First of all I have tried to exempt this webpage by using the Web assistant
on the top right-hand corner of my Internet Explorer 6 browser. I loaded the
webpage and from the Web assistant pull-down menu I clicked the Ad Blocking
option to clear the check mark in front of it and disable it for this
particular webpage only. The webpage refreshed but the three advertising
banners were still blocked and did not show. I disconnected and rebooted but
when I went online and loaded the webpage again the situation did not
changed and all the banners were still blocked from showing.
According to what is written in the relevant article in the Symantec
knowledge base, one would normally expect that things would work fine in
this way but, unfortunately, this Web assistant method has completely failed
to have any ad unblocking effect, at least on this specific webpage.
And here is my first question: Could you please explain to me why, contrary
to any normal expectation, the Norton Internet Security Web asssistant has
failed to work and unblock these three advertising banners from the AT&T
Global Network home page? I am really absolutely confused about it and
cannot think of any possible explanation for it.
And seeing that the Web assistant method has failed to work I did not give
up, yet. I momentarily turned off Ad Blocking and loaded once again this
webpage so that the advertising banners appear. I then re-enabled Ad
Blocking, clicked Configure, Advanced and then Add Site to add the
www.attbusiness.net site to the list of websites on the left part of the
Advanced dialog box. By right-clicking on each advertising banner on the
AT&T Global Network homepage and subsequently clicking Properties I, many
times and in many different ways, very hard tried to write strings by
selecting www.attbusiness.net from the list of websites on the left part of
the Ad Blocking/Configure/Advanced dialog box in Norton Internet Security
2004, clicking the Add... button on the Ad Blocking tab on the right side of
the same dialog box and coping all or part of each banner's URL in the
relevant text field of the "Add new HTML String dialog box" and selecting
Permit. Unfortunately, all these so many different HTML strings I have tried
have all failed to unblock the advertising banners.
I have also tried all the above on two more computers running Norton
Internet Security 2004 on Windows XP Professional with absolutely no
difference. They all failed to work and everything was identical to the
situation in my own computer.
Before I send you this email I have also given a call to the Symantec
telephone support but they have failed to advise me of something different
than what I have already tried and, anyway, they also seemed unable to
provide an adequate explanation as to why the Web assistant method has
failed.
So, not knowing what to do any more, I have, as a last resort, decided to
send you this email. I would be deeply grateful if you could reproduce the
problem on your own system according to the steps and instructions I have
described above and analytically email back to me what I should do in order
to successfully exempt the AT&T Global Network homepage so that the Norton
Internet Security Ad Blocking component will no longer block these three
advertising banners without being universally turned off for any other web
site.
Could you also please explain to me why the use of the Norton Internet
Security 2004 Web assistant on the top right-hand corner of my Internet
Explorer 6 browser on the AT&T Global Network homepage has failed to unblock
these advertising banners?
I would in addition like to bring to your notice that I have a MasterCard
credit card and if you think that I will have to be charged for the solution
of this problem please let me know of the way I should forward to the
Symantec technical support department my credit card details.
Thanks a lot for your attention and I am anxiously expecting your reply as
soon as possible.
Best regards!
Theodore Stathopoulos