The man who invented pop-up advertisements deeply regrets it and says he’s very sorry. In 1997 Ethan Zuckerman wrote the code for the first pop-up and added it to a website. This, he believes, was the Internet’s equivalent of the original sin. While he understands that many websites and services on the Internet wouldn’t function without getting funding from advertisements, he believes that it’s high time to find an alternative that doesn’t involve an invasion of our privacy.