Porno popups

[Elainej]

How do I stop popups, particularly the pornographic kind from appearing on my home computer.

[IndieSinger]

Firstly, do you mean colourful pop-ups full of pictures and fancy writing, or have you recently upgraded to Windows XP and are you getting the plain text Windows Alert System Messages (or whatever they're called)? The former should be easy to stop - just don't visit porn sites. The latter is a touch more difficult because, for some reason, Windows XP sets the default setting for these annoying messages at "on" and they're not easy to turn off. They can be sent by anyone and are sent to any computer anywhere just by typing in the IP address (and there are programmes available which will send messages to tens of thousands of IP address per second.
To disable Windows Messenger Service pop-up ads:

1) From the Start Menu, select Settings;
2) Open the Control Panel;
3) Open Administrative Tools;
4) Open Services;
5) Double-Click the Messenger service;
6) Configure the start-up type to disabled.


This page helps:
Hope target=_blank>http://www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/docs/messagepo
pup/

Hope
this helps.

[IndieSinger]

That link should be: http://www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/docs/messagepo
pup/

[bizzylizzy]

We're getting deluged by these as well. Pipex our ISP says that they're being targetted at the moment. Apparently the porn companies just keep randomly generating e mail addresses until they strike lucky. Pipex say they can't do anything about it and they're trying to put something in place at the moment to stop them getting through to customers. It worries me because some of the stuff that comes through isn't just page 3 stuff it quite hard core and sometimes the header bars says things like 're your invoice' or 'in reply to your letter', so you open it up thinking it's a normal message. I work on Apple Mac and I would be interested to know if I can stop these messages as well. bizzylizzy bizzylizzy

[j2buttonsw]

Try running spybot search and destroy ( http://www.safer-networking.org/ remember to update the definitions and then immunise), then run adaware ( http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ again update the definitions) and I have also found spywareblaster ( http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.htm
l ) to be pretty good.

[Maudlettice]

Just to confirm that buttons is right. We became absolutely inundated with pop-up rubbish, but adaware and spybot have stopped it. You may have to run them two or three times in close succession at first, and we also used delete cookies, files and history from Internet Options at the same time.

[Elainej]

Thanks IndiSinger - for the record I have never visited a porn site so that's not the reason. I have now deleted all shareware that I previously downloaded and this seems to have done the trick. Apparently using shareware opens up the channel for these sites to get through to me.