Disable Pop-up Blockers and Enable Third-Party Cookies

What are Ad and Pop-up Blockers?

Pop-up blockers serve an extremely useful purpose: preventing annoying ads from interrupting you while visiting a page. If you’re not using an ad and pop-up blocker like AdBlock, we hope you’re using your browser’s settings to prevent pop-ups from bothering you. In fact most browsers enable basic pop-up blocking by default. But you may occasionally need to disable your pop-up blocker in order to print something, open a login screen, or get access to information that pops up in a new window.

If you’re only using AdBlock, temporarily disabling it to allow pop-ups is as easy as a couple of clicks. But if you need to disable the pop-up blocker in your browser, it’s a little more complicated. Here’s how to disable your pop-up blocker in any browser:

How to Disable AdBlock

Disabling AdBlock on a Particular Site

  1. Open a browser that has AdBlock installed.
  2. Go to the site you’d like to whitelist.
  3. Click on the AdBlock icon.
  4. Click “Don’t run on pages on this domain”.
  5. Click “Exclude” on the window that appears.
  6. Click “Options” on the previous menu to manage your exceptions.

Disabling AdBlock in Your Browser

  1. Open a web browser that uses AdBlock.
  2. Find your browser’s “Add-On” or “Extension” section.”
  3. Find AdBlock on the list of extensions.
  4. Pause AdBlock.
  5. Remove AdBlock Completely.

Disabling Adblock on Mobile Devices

  1. Tap on the AdBlock on your phone to open it.
  2. Access the settings menu.
  3. Check your settings for the internet provider to ensure your ad blocker is working.

How to Disable Pop-Up Blocker: Chrome (Desktop)

  1. Open your Chrome browser
  2. In the upper right-hand corner, click the three vertical dots, then select Settings
  3. At the bottom of the menu, click Advanced
  4. Scroll down to “Privacy and security,” and select Site Settings
  5. Select Pop-ups and redirects
  6. At the top of the menu, toggle the setting to Allowed to disable the pop-up blocker

How to Disable Pop-Up Blocker: Firefox (Desktop)

  1. Open your Firefox browser
  2. Click the Menu button, then select Options
  3. Select Privacy & Security
  4. Under Permissions, uncheck Block pop-up windows to disable the pop-up blocker

How to Disable Pop-Up Blocker: Edge

  1. Open your Microsoft Edge browser
  2. Go to Settings, then select more Settings Privacy & security
  3. Under Security, switch Block pop-ups to off to disable the pop-up blocker

How to Disable Pop-Up Blocker: Safari (Mac)

Mac:

  1. Select Safari Preferences, then select Websites
  2. Select Pop-up Windows
  3. Use the When visiting other websites drop-down menu and select Allow to disable the pop-up blocker

How to Disable Pop-Up Blocker: iPhone/iOS

Safari for iOS:

  1. On your iOS device, open the Settingsmenu
  2. Select Safari
  3. Slide Block Pop-upsto off (white) to disable pop-up blocking

Chrome for iOS:

  1. On your iOS device, open the Chrome app
  2. Tap More > Settings
  3. Tap Content Settings, then tap Block Pop-ups
  4. Turn Block Pop-ups off to allow pop-ups

How to Disable Pop-Up Blocker: Android

Chrome:

  1. On your Android device, open the Chrome app
  2. Tap More > Settings
  3. Tap Site settings, then Pop-ups and redirects
  4. Turn Pop-ups and redirects on to allow pop-ups

Samsung Internet:

  1. On your Android device, open the Samsung Internet app
  2. Tap the Menu icon (three vertical lines)
  3. Select Settings
  4. Under Advanced, tap Sites and downloads
  5. Slide Block Pop-ups to off (white) to disable pop-up blocking

What are Cookies?

Cookies are basically little pieces of code that are meant to do specific things based on how they were programmed. Most cookies are used to do things like store usernames as well as remember the activities of users when visiting websites. This is useful for both the users and the web managers since it helps save a lot of time and effort.

Most of the time, cookies are sent to a user’s computer once a website is accessed. The next time the user visits that website, the platform will connect with the cookies in the user’s computer in order to activate the functionality mentioned above.

Types of Website Cookies

Almost all websites today are setting cookies to help validate the users whenever they visit a secure part of the website. Cookies are created whenever a user uses a browser to load a specific website. Login information is saved inside a cookie to allow the visitor to enter and leave the website without the user having to re-enter the same information over and over again.

Session Cookies are used by a website’s server to be able to save data about page activities. This allows users to easily pick up where they left off. Originally, websites really don’t have “memories”. Cookies communicate to the server the pages to show to the user in order to avoid having to navigate a website all over again just to find the last page you were into. Session cookies act as a “bookmark” within a website. These cookies can also store order information needed by online shopping carts to avoid forcing the buyer remember all the items they have put inside a shopping cart.

Tracking Cookies are used to save user preferences. Most websites authorize their users to personalize how information is shown through the website’s layout or theme. These customization’s make the website easier to navigate and it allows users to leave a piece of their character within the website.

How to Enable Cookies

 Google Chrome

These screenshots are taken in Chrome on Windows but the process is identical on Mac and Linux computers.

  1. Click the “Customize and Control” button

Customize and Control

This will reveal a menu with lots of options. One of them will be named “Settings“.

  1. Select the “Settings” menu item

Select the Settings

The Settings screen will now appear.

  1. Search for the Cookies settings

Cookies settings

The main interface for Chrome’s settings will appear, with a dark blue search box at the very top. (If you only see the magnifying glass icon, either click it or drag your browser window a bit wider to make the search box appear).

Chrome has hundreds of different configuration options, so to quickly go to the Cookies settings, type the word “cookie” into the search box and Chrome will filter out options which don’t match.

  1. Scroll down to “Content settings” and click it

Content settings

After you’ve typed “cookie” in the search, there will still be a number of different options listed, so you need to scroll down to the bottom of the settings screen where you will see a section named Content settings.

  1. Click the “Cookies” item

Cookies item

Now that you’ve gone into the Content settings section, you’ll see the first option there is Cookies. You’ll notice that it’s still highlighted yellow due to your search for it. Click it to see your Cookies settings.

  1. Choose your preferred Cookies settings

Cookies settings

You can now change your Cookies setting to what you want.

Typically (especially if you are already following this guide!) you want to enable cookies in Chrome by selecting the first option – “Allow sites to save and read cookie data (recommended)“. This will allow websites to store cookies (and other data!) on your computer for as long as the websites want to.

If you want to disable cookies the set that option to Off (slid to the left and greyed out).

An possibility to consider is keeping cookies enabled but also turning on “Keep local data only until you quit your browser“. This will allow normal cookie functionality (eg. logging into websites with a username and password), however every time you close and reopen your web browser, you would need to log in to the website again. This setting can also help (but not necessarily eliminate) advertising companies tracking your behavior across various browsing sessions.

One other option to consider is to “Block third-party cookies and site data“. If you have cookies enabled and also have this option enabled it means (basically) that any website you directly visit is allowed to store cookies on your computer, but any “third-party” website (eg the server that places advertising banners on the site) is not allowed to place a cookie to track you. Note that this will not stop the advertising appearing, just (hopefully) decrease the amount of tracking they perform.

  1. Close the settings tab

The settings you change take effect immediately, and when you’re finished changing the options you can simply close the Settings tab that contained these options and resume browsing.

Congratulations, you just configured Cookies in Chrome.

Internet Explorer

1. Open your Internet Explorer browser and click on the gear icon. Click Internet Options from the drop down menu that pops out.
2. Under the Privacy tab, click Advanced button under Settings.
3. Tick accept on both options and tick Always allow session cookies if it is still disabled. Click Ok when you’re done.
4. That’s it. Your Internet Explorer can use cookies now.

Microsoft Edge

1. Open your Microsoft Edge browser and click the menu button that resembled this symbol “…”. Click the Settings option at the bottom of the drop down menu.
2. Scroll down to find Advanced Settings and click View advanced settings.
3. Scroll down to find Cookies and select Don’t block cookies among the options available. Refresh your browser.
4. You’re done now. Your Microsoft Edge internet browser should be able to use cookies now.

Mozilla Firefox

1. Open your Firefox browser and click the drop down menu. Click Options.
2. Go to the Privacy Tab and find the History section to change the command for Firefox will: from Remember history to Use customer settings for history.
3. Tick the Accept cookies from sites box and set the Accept third-party cookies to Always. Refresh your browser.
4. You can now use cookies on your Firefox browser.

Opera

1. Open your Opera browser and click Tools. Click Preferences.
2. Go to the Advanced tab and tick the Accept cookies option. Click Ok.
3. Your Opera web browser should be able to use cookies now.

Safari

1. Open the Safari web browser and click on the drop down menu on the upper right corner. Click Preferences.
2. Go to the Privacy tab and tick the Never option under Block cookies to allow all cookies to be enabled. Close the window and refresh your browser.
3. Done. Your Safari web browser can now access cookies.