Computer Help Please-Annoying Messenger Service Ad Pop Ups!

Derek · Post by **Derek** » Sun Jul 13, 2003 12:01 pm

i followed the advice too and have been irrating pop ups free for the past few days.

i had options for start up of auto, manual and disabled. first time round i pressed stop but still got them so then set it to manual instead of auto then pressed stop again and all is well now.

Robbie · Post by **Robbie** » Sun Jul 13, 2003 2:13 pm

Nice one Derek!

thebigkung · Post by **thebigkung** » Sun Jul 13, 2003 3:00 pm

Q. Buy why are you getting the pop ups in the first place?

A. You have probably got some 'SPYWARE' on your PC. Using anti-popup software does not remove the fact that you have rougue software on your PC that is using your network connection (and slowing things down)

I Suggest you also download a program called adaware

you can get it from http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10045 ... egacy=cnet

This will identify any software that is using your PC without your knowlege.

Regards,

thebigkung

Robbie · Post by **Robbie** » Mon Jul 14, 2003 12:56 am

Q. Buy why are you getting the pop ups in the first place?

A. You have probably got some 'SPYWARE' on your PC. Using anti-popup software does not remove the fact that you have rougue software on your PC that is using your network connection (and slowing things down)

I Suggest you also download a program called adaware

you can get it from http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10045 ... egacy=cnet

This will identify any software that is using your PC without your knowlege.

Regards,

thebigkung

If you read my previous post you'd see I regularly run Adaware 6, makes no difference to the pop ups, however Andy's suggestion has stopped them.

thebigkung · Post by **thebigkung** » Mon Jul 14, 2003 6:28 pm

Sorry, missed that - it's a lonooog post!

Not very good detecting on my part!

Regards,

Sherlock

MattB · Post by **MattB** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 1:03 pm

Get a firewall guys, please!

As myself and others have said, stopping the service stops the popups but your computer is still VERY vulnerable. Trust me, I do this every day for a living. I've just been over in the USA and had a laptop with me that I plugged into someone's ADSL connection. As soon as I turned the lappie on I got those popups.

I installed Sygate's personal firewall which is free. After installing that I got no popups at all, and the messenger service is still running.

Install one now before it's too late!!! (Am I starting to sound like a popup advert??!!!)

ex pug owner · Post by **ex pug owner** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 1:37 pm

Well having eventually got round to reading this thread I'm glad to say I don't and never have got any messenger popups. Had one once at work advertising some compromising pics of Britney Spears!

I am totally fed of getting SPAM emails though and end up getting at least 2 or 3 bloody wait loss, loans etc everyday. I'm pretty careful about who I give my email address out to but SPAM seems to get to you eventually anyway

Anybody recommend some cheap (or free) SPAM protection for email that actually works??

MattB · Post by **MattB** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 2:02 pm

There's a system called SpamAssassin that's totally free - we use it at work but it's not at all simple to install and I don't think it integrates with mail clients at all, especially not on Windows!

So overall I'm probably not much help! Sorry :rolleyes:

Greenday · Post by **Greenday** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 2:31 pm

Do a search on a program called spybot, that will remove all the programs that send out your E-mail address without you knowing to the people who send you SPAM

ex pug owner · Post by **ex pug owner** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 2:46 pm

Ah SpamAssasin! I forgot we use that at work too, it's integrated with our email server (mdaemon). I didn't want to 'borrow' a complete mail server but after a quick look at www.spamasassin.org and I can see there's a simple solution that integrates with OE and also includes some anti SPAM software for the messenger service too. There's a free trial version on there and the full product is a measly $30.

Cheers Matt - you were some help after all

PS Greenday, I think its the fact that I'm the webmaster of a few domains that I get lots of SPAM. I once had 50 emails sent to me from one company to various email addresses all within the same domain. Because I had 'catch all' email setup for my domain I ended up downloading all of them

Greenday · Post by **Greenday** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 3:17 pm

I would say its more likely to be picked up spyware from websites that you've visited and these have passed on your E-mail addresses, i bet if you load spybot on your machine it will find 20 programs that are classed as Spyware

ex pug owner · Post by **ex pug owner** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 4:08 pm

I bet it doesn't

but I'll give it a try anyway....

MattB · Post by **MattB** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 4:27 pm

Ah SpamAssasin! I forgot we use that at work too, it's integrated with our email server (mdaemon).

Similar setup at my place, except we use postfix at the front end and MS Exchange behind it (I don't trust Exchange to be available from the outside world!!!!)

Cheers Matt - you were some help after all

First time for everything!

ex pug owner · Post by **ex pug owner** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 10:48 pm

I would say its more likely to be picked up spyware from websites that you've visited and these have passed on your E-mail addresses, i bet if you load spybot on your machine it will find 20 programs that are classed as Spyware

Well you were wrong it found 75 problems

65 of those were due to the automatic updating software of my digital camera which is disabled but there's still registry entries for it. The rest were mainly due to security holes in IE - must remember to visit Windows Update more often.

It was interesting to try that software though - thanks for pointing it out

Greenday · Post by **Greenday** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 12:32 am

I knew it would find a good few, i was suprised when i checked mine out