What are Active X Controls? Do they really contain adware? If so, is there a way to prevent this?

Question

I like to play some of the PopCap games in Pogo, but my tech told me they contain adware and my security settings always warn me about downloading them.

Answer 1

active x allows programs to access servers that are remote from your computer. That way the full program does not need to be installed on your computer. They can be pointers to servers that have adware on them, but normally the active x is not the adware. A good explanation i pulled off of the net is:

A loosely defined set of technologies developed by Microsoft for sharing information among different applications. ActiveX is an outgrowth of two other Microsoft technologies called OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) and COM (Component Object Model). As a moniker, ActiveX can be very confusing because it applies to a whole set of COM-based technologies. Most people, however, think only of ActiveX controls, which represent a specific way of implementing ActiveX technologies.

Answer 2

Many ActiveX controls contain adware. I only choose to accept the ones from well known companies like Adobe, Macromedia, and Microsoft, to name a few.

There's nothing inherently bad about ActiveX, but there are many malicious ActiveX controls out there.