Netscape "connection was refused"

[gunman]

I use Netscape 6.2 and just started having an unwanted window start popping up. Whenever I go to a requested website inaddition to my website I get a window with the statement; "The connection was refused when attemtping to contact _________. The underlined area is a website address. One I have seen is doubleclick.com, but there have been many others. Also there is a "!" on the left side of the window. This window apparently has nothing to do with my requested website and does not appear every time I change screens. Any ideas?

 

[sjsconsult]

I'm havingthe same problem with NS7 and XP Pro. Has any come up with an answer yet? The problem only occurs accessing https. IE works fine on the same site.

 

[nmbeck3]

I'm having the same problem with NS7 and Win98.

Detail: I have a large hosts file that contains many reputed pop-up and pop-under advertisers URLs pointing to 127.0.0.1. Several iterations of doubleclick.net are in it, and they always seem to produce the error. Hmmm...

I'm not eager to experiment with removing these philistines from my hosts file, but I suspect that the error would disappear if I did.

Have these "pushy" advertisers devised something new? Like a penalty?

Nate