What is happening when a pop-up comes up and disappears immediatly

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Sometimes when I visit a (file-sharing) site a pop-up shows up that immediately closes afterwards. It's there for only a split second. It doesn't seem as if a site is actually loaded in the pop-up, then again it disappears very quickly so I can't tell.

Can this do any harm?

I am not linking to the actual site in case the pop-up is harmful in a way.

I'm on Mountain Lion 10.8.5 with Firefox 27.0.1.

Saaru Lindestøkke

Posted 2014-03-23T19:23:55.087

Reputation: 1 275

Do you have an ad blocker installed? – jjlin – 2014-03-23T22:09:29.620

Yes, AdBlock Plus 2.5.1 – Saaru Lindestøkke – 2014-03-24T00:37:19.903

Ad blockers may take a split second to detect and kill a popup, so you'll still see the window appear briefly in such cases. – jjlin – 2014-03-24T00:49:45.260

It's not only ad blockers. You can also experience the same thing with the default pop-up blocker in FF, especially if the site you are visiting is heavy with scripts. – Kard Nails – 2014-03-24T13:58:45.040

So chances are low that it's some malicious script executing very fast or something? – Saaru Lindestøkke – 2014-03-24T14:21:25.100

No answers