The latest version of e-Sword now has advertising pop-ups. At best, these can be annoying. At worst, you might live in a country which discourages their residents (by imprisonment or death) from connecting to Christian websites.
To my knowledge there is no way to turn off the pop-ups in the e-Sword program itself. However, you can disable the pop-ups by going to Control Panel / Windows Firewall / Advanced Settings. Create a new "inbound rule" and a new "outbound rule." Select Programs and follow the instructions. You will need to browse to the file named e-Sword.exe which is located one of these folders:
- C:\Program Files\e-Sword
- C:\Program Files (86x)\e-Sword
One benefit of doing this is that e-Sword loads way faster. I thought that the reason e-Sword loaded so slow was because of all the modules I have installed. But that is not the case. Every time you load e-Sword, it makes a connection to the internet. You might say that it "phones home" to see if it should send you advertising pop-ups today. Once you disable its ability to connect to the internet, it loads much faster.
I was afraid that disabling e-Swords ability to connect to the internet would also block the download feature found on the Main Menu. It does not. You can still download modules just fine from the Main Menu.
The whole issue of e-Sword "phoning home" every time you start the program brings up privacy issues — especially for people living in certain countries that frown upon their residents from connecting to Christian websites. One person on an e-Sword discussion board made the following good points:
Some people don't want their computer and IP address being recorded at e-sword.net anytime they are connected to the internet. What if you live in a country where you could get in trouble for that? What if you downloaded and installed e-sword before you arrived in a country to avoid connections with a Christian website? What if you installed from a cd to avoid an internet connection with a Christian website? This is very bad.
Here's a discussion of the privacy issues related to e-Sword pop-ups:
http://www.biblesupport.com/topic/2114-e-sword-101-released/page__st__40
Here's a Youtube video on how to use Windows firewall settings to block programs from accessing the internet:
Hope you find this info helpful.
Bob
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