Invasive ! Pop-ups

[swmr]

Occasionally (though, more often lately), I am confronted with a modeless dialog that pops up, and prompts me with something like:

"WARNING:YOUR MESSENGER SERVICE IS WIDE OPEN TO THE ENTIRE INTERNET"... bla, bla, bla..

Does anyone know what the deal is with these messages?

Where do they come from?...

Why are they attacking me? :eek: :eek: :eek:

[mouse]

First thing I'd do is scan for Spyware that may have sneaked onto your system.

Spybot's a pretty good tool I use: http://spybot.safer-networking.de/

[Spookster]

They are just exploiting the messenger service of your operating system. Are you using windows XP or windows 2000? Go to the administrative tools find Services and then find the messenger service and disable it.

[orangehairedboy]

Basically, when computers are networked together, there is a built in function which allows users to send messages to other users...

You can try it out on your own computer by going Start > Run and type "net send localhost Hello World!"

localhost point to your own computer...it's the same for everyone.

There's nothing dangerous about having the messager enabled...there's no way you can get a virus or anything else like that...but if you want to turn it off you can.

[swmr]

Thank you all for the information... hopefully it'll stop the evil :eek: advertising.

[Spookster]

Also firewall software like ZoneAlarm will stop it as well without having to disable the messenger service.