They're everywhere...

[venta]

I'm beset by evil popups :(

Not the normal baby web-page kind, but things which pop up claiming to be from a 'messenger service'. So far they've mostly been offering me porn sites (one of which was apparently "a good spend of time"), and the opportunity to work from home.

They contain no click-through links, and appear to have no purpose other than to appear in the middle of my screen, offering me the option to paste their links into my browser. They appear at random, not when I visit a new page, or anything of that sort.

Does anyone know how I can make them go away ? I'm using Windows XP. (Comments such as "well that's your problem then" will not be considered helpful, though comments such as "stop using IE" are fair enough if it will help, and you recommend something better :)

Comments

[davefish.livejournal.com]

So far they've mostly been offering me porn sites (one of which was apparently "a good spend of time"), and the opportunity to work from home.

Simultaneously?

[ericklendl.livejournal.com]

This may be what you're looking for (http://www.auburn.edu/oit/security/messengerService.html). It worked for me.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thanks a lot - that does indeed look like What I Want. Well done, that man.

[thegreenman.livejournal.com]

Yep, I had this yesterday working at home. Stopping the messenger service fixes it. I checked with DK and IS only use it to announce the sarnie van to denizens of the Gulag, so it's acceptable to turn it off.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm working from home today, so figured I could bugger about with my own machine and turn things off :)

At least I would be working from home if scp hadn't taken a turn for the weird and started refusing to let me at my files :(

What is this?

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Oooh. That's a new one on me. I've only just started seeing X10 adverts, mind you.

The other option, according to the security advisory, would be to firewall off port 135. That would have the advantage off allowing messages through when you're connected to a network that does use this sort of thing legitimately.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Ok, does anybody know how I make Netscape forget the values I last filled in on the Subject: field?

To answer my own question

[wimble.livejournal.com]

It's in the Password Manager. Because there's a password field. So it's not managed by the Form Manager. Oh no. That would be too easy.

Another thing to check...

[condign.livejournal.com]

...not necessarily for your problem, but there are programs like Comet Cursor, etc. that can be loaded onto your machine, and which transmit information about you back to a website, as well as cause pop ups. Bonzai Buddie was one of these. Every so often, it's worth going to 'Add/Remove Programs' and checking to see that you haven't unintentionally installed any software you didn't mean to.

I hate people doing this with the internet--it makes life so much more difficult for legitimate operators.