Well, it's altogether possible that it isn't 
from a pop-up here at animanga that you're 
getting spyware installed on your machine. You 
could already have a trojan on your computer 
that has been missed by every virus and spyware 
scanner out there.. believe me, I've seen it 
happen to people -- I'm a network abuse 
specialist for an ISP.

Personally, I'm using the Panicware pop-up 
blocker provided free by the ISP I work for, and 
even that doesn't stop all pop-ups. 

Your best bet to keep spyware from being 
installed: run Spybot search and destroy or Ad-Aware 
at least once a week on your machine, get a good 
pop-up blocker, and a good antivirus program. 
The best (and last line of defense)is a 
firewall. In my experience, the best firewalls 
are hardware -- built into routers or hubs. 
Also, make sure you keep IE and your version of 
Windows up to date! 

And to answer someone's question about WinXP 
SP2 -- I have the beta version that was just 
released to testers on friday (I think it was 
friday) and it does indeed have a pop-up blocker 
built into it.. but this is microsoft, folks... 
it's bound to be flawed or have some major 
security loophole. 

Just thought I'd give my two cents since this is 
along my line of work....

--zerospace