Why do I keep getting a newsletter subscribe pop-up on your site?

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Summary: The popup box that appears one minute after you first visit Ask Leo! should only appear twice a year. If more, it's probably cookie related.

I am already a subscribed to your newsletter, but I keep getting a pop-up asking me to subscribe. This 'nagging' action is a fairly recent problem. This is beginning to annoy me and I would appreciate knowing how to stop this from occurring.

First, thanks for subscribing, I appreciate it.

Second, I'm sorry that my site is annoying you. It's not supposed to.

The problem is cookies.

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The fact that you're subscribed actually has nothing to do with whether or not you see that popup. The website actually doesn't know who you are, and certainly doesn't know whether or not you're already subscribed to the newsletter.

However that popup is supposed to be shown exactly once, and then not again for 6 months. (The six months may change, but you get the idea, it's supposed to be "a long time".)

It does so by instructing your web browser to put a cookie on your machine so that it knows "oh, you've seen this already, I don't need to bug you".

So why is it bugging you anyway?

There are several possibilities:

• You have cookies disabled. Without cookies, I have no way to keep track of the fact that you've seen the popup before.

• Your internet security software is blocking cookies. Same problem: without cookies, I don't know not to bug you. If you can, add an exception for both "ask-leo.com" and "aweber.com". AWeber is my newsletter email provider.

• You're regularly clearing your cookies - either manually or through some automated process. This causes my site to "forget" that you'd visited before.

• You're using a different browser on each visit. OK, probably not each visit, but since each browser keeps it's own list of cookies, the first time you visit the site in, say, Internet Explorer, you'll still see the pop-up once even though you've visited before using FireFox.

• You're using a different machine. Same issue as the previous point - cookies are kept separately on each machine.

If none of those work, you can also block Javascript on my site, and you'll not see the popup. My recommended approach is to use the NoScript plugin to FireFox to enable and disable Javascript selectively on for sites that you do and don't trust.

Or for sites that annoy you.

Finally, I agree: this shouldn't be your problem. I've put in a request that the popup not be displayed at all to people with cookies disabled. That won't solve all the scenarios above, but perhaps the most common.

Related:

• Ask Leo! - How do I turn off those ads that look like links on your site?

• Ask Leo! - Can I republish your articles?

• Ask Leo! - Leo's Answers weekly newsletter.

Article 12495 | Posted January 5, 2003