Read more here What to Do If You Saw an ‘Antivirus’ Pop-Up Ad - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com Happened to me one time
Use noscript for Firefox and you should be more safer. I have seen anti virus popups through Google but never ended up with a virus through their methods.
I don't use noscript and don't see popups. The popup protection in Firefox is sufficient for the sites that I browse.
Thats the thing, with the amount of spam emails linking to dodgy paypals and all sorts it is always best to be that extra bit protected. I dont get popups with it off but I have seen it block quite a few strange sounding scripts.
I have yet to see a Paypal phishing email. I get drug ones all the time but I have triple filtering on my email so rarely see them... First they are filtered by Hotmail/MSN/Gmail depending on the account. Than Windows Live Mail Desktop has its own filtering built in. Finally, Norton Internet Security 2010 filters a third time in case anything was missed. Though I have to say that Though Google's filter isn't very good in my opinion. It keeps junking my Sitepoint and Alert Box newsletters. I always tell it that they aren't junk and fish them out. The next week, it filters them again. You'd think it would learn over time. I've actually never had a reason to visit open proxies.