Hi Paul -
These are most likely due to open NetBios ports 135, 137-139 and
445. You really need to block these with a firewall as a general
protection measure. You can stop the popups by turning off Messenger
Service; however, this still leaves you vulnerable.
See: Messenger Service Window That Contains an Internet Advertisement
Appears
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=330904 which identifies reasons
to keep this service and steps to take if you do.
You can test your system and follow the 'Prevention' link to get
additional information here:
http://www.mynetwatchman.com/winpopuptester.asp Unless you have very
good reasons to keep this active, it should be turned off in Win2k and
XP. Go here and do what it says:
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/docs/messagepopup/ or, even better,
get MessageSubtract, free, here, which will give you flexible control of
the service and viewing of these messages:
http://www.intermute.com/messagesubtract/help.html Recommended.
(FWIW, ZoneAlarm's default Internet Zone firewall configuration blocks
the necessary ports to prevent this use of Messenger Service. I don't
know the situation with regard to other firewalls.)
Messenger Service is not per se Spyware or something that MS did wrong -
It provides a
messaging capability which is useful for local intranets and is also
sometimes (albeit nowdays infrequently) used by some applications to
provide popup messaages to users. However, it can also be (and now
frequently is) used to introduce spam via this open NetBios channel.
For a single user home computer, it normally isn't needed and can be
turned off which will eliminate the spam popups. This DOESN'T, however,
remove the vulnerability of having these ports open, when in fact they
aren't needed, since they can be perverted in other ways as well, some
of which can be much more damaging than just a spam popup.
--
Regards, Jim Byrd, MS-MVP
Please respond in original thread in Newsgroup.
In
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