annoying messenger pop-ups sussed!!!

annoying messenger pop-ups sussed!!!

Author
Discussion

heckler

126 posts

249 months

Tuesday 15th July 2003
quotequote all
Fantastic .. I'm going to try this tonight on the home PC.
I had looked into it before, but obviously didn't find the right boxes to tick. Removing Messenger from the Startup sequence using msconfig doesn't work as it seems to be initiated every time you open IE, Outlook etc.

Thanks again.

pg( :fingerscrossed: )

>> Edited by heckler on Tuesday 15th July 10:59

plotloss

67,280 posts

269 months

Tuesday 15th July 2003
quotequote all
Thats MSN Messenger rather than the Messenger Service.

All the Messenger service does is monitor for packets on a specific port and dialog them to the screen.

Its rarely used inside the enterprise and hardly ever legitimately used over the web. The AV providers will use a proprietary transport rather than relying on Microsofts internal net monitoring.

tvrtim

438 posts

261 months

Tuesday 15th July 2003
quotequote all
Plotloss, THANKS for your reply. I do not have admin services in my control panel.I have tried a search for it and nothing comes up.
Any further ideas please.

plotloss

67,280 posts

269 months

Tuesday 15th July 2003
quotequote all
tvrtim said:
Plotloss, THANKS for your reply. I do not have admin services in my control panel.I have tried a search for it and nothing comes up.
Any further ideas please.


Right click My Computer select Manage

Last entry in the tree on the left should be 'Service and Applications'

Open up that branch of the tree and you should see Services as the first entry.

Then follow the instructions for disabling the Messenger service mentioned further up.

tvrtim

438 posts

261 months

Tuesday 15th July 2003
quotequote all
Sorry to be a pain, Plotloss, but I dont get Manage when Rt clicking on My computer.

plotloss

67,280 posts

269 months

Tuesday 15th July 2003
quotequote all
tvrtim said:
Sorry to be a pain, Plotloss, but I dont get Manage when Rt clicking on My computer.


Then if that is the case I would guess that you are reading this on a work machine, attached to a network that has been quite seriously locked down by the sphincter police aka IT...

FourWheelDrift

88,375 posts

283 months

Tuesday 15th July 2003
quotequote all
tvrtim said:
Sorry to be a pain, Plotloss, but I dont get Manage when Rt clicking on My computer.


Can you click "Start" choose "Run" then type "services.msc" into the box?

tin man

Original Poster:

149 posts

260 months

Tuesday 15th July 2003
quotequote all
hope this has helped,i posted it here cus I wanted to try and help as many people as possible and not have to pay top doller to those who are setting us up,eg:Endadsnow or whoever!!!

IPAddis

2,470 posts

283 months

Tuesday 15th July 2003
quotequote all
squirrelz said:
...and if you get these kind of messages, then you aren't sufficiently firewalled from the internet.

You should install something like zonealarm, if you're connected to the internet for any length of time.


I have to agree with Squirrelz here, if you're going to the effort of stopping people from hikacking the Messenger service, imagine what other services they can hack into. ZoneAlarm is free but annoying. XP users should be covered by the built-in firewall?

Go to www.grc.com and run ShieldsUp and ProbeMyPorts (behave) to see how exposed (ahem) you really are.

Ian A.

Byff

4,427 posts

260 months

Tuesday 15th July 2003
quotequote all
squirrelz said:
...and if you get these kind of messages, then you aren't sufficiently firewalled from the internet.

You should install something like zonealarm, if you're connected to the internet for any length of time.


Running zonealarm and have blocked all content from messenger - works a treat as I don't use or intend to use messenger.

pdV6

16,442 posts

260 months

Wednesday 16th July 2003
quotequote all
IPAddis said:

ZoneAlarm is free but annoying. XP users should be covered by the built-in firewall?

ZA is pretty quiet once you've gone through the initial bedding-in period of deciding which things to allow forever and which to block forever.

Not sure I'd trust the XP firewall, (a) because what's the betting somebody already has the source code for it and (b) MS & security in the same sentence has always raised a laugh in the past!

Robertuk

591 posts

261 months

Wednesday 16th July 2003
quotequote all
ZoneAlarm is a free download and is essential if your on broadband . In the home , we use to be given a dynamic I.P address and would not be connected online for long. Now with broadband we are on for longer periods and due to the speed, someone can grab data pretty fast.

Most hackers/whatever go for easy targets. So start using a firewall / software like Zonealarm you'll be in the current minority and safe.

The new beta of the Google toolbar comes with a pop-up blocker. Its been working fine so far (I've been using it for about a week).

The trouble with most pop-ups is the content,
esp. at work or in the home.

rich 36

13,739 posts

265 months

Wednesday 16th July 2003
quotequote all
how does it work for windows ME ?

squirrelz

1,186 posts

270 months

Wednesday 16th July 2003
quotequote all
IIRC Windows 9x (including ME) does not have anything equivalent to the messenger service.

You should still run a personal firewall, though, and some kind of anti-virus software.

Edit - just realised that if you have file and printer sharing enabled, then you'd probably be able to receive these messages too.

>> Edited by squirrelz on Wednesday 16th July 16:45

squirrelz

1,186 posts

270 months

Wednesday 16th July 2003
quotequote all
For those that don't know what we're talking about here, this is what a messenger pop-up looks like:


We aren't talking about html pop-ups, which appear when you're vising advertising supported websites.

rsvnigel

600 posts

265 months

Wednesday 16th July 2003
quotequote all
IPAddis said:
Go to www.grc.com and run ShieldsUp and ProbeMyPorts (behave) to see how exposed (ahem) you really are.
The GRC scanner really stinks, norton isn't much better. Out of the vendors scanners the one at scan.sygate.com is probably the best of a bad bunch.

Alan420

5,550 posts

257 months

Wednesday 16th July 2003
quotequote all
squirrelz said:
For those that don't know what we're talking about here, this is what a messenger pop-up looks like:


We aren't talking about html pop-ups, which appear when you're vising advertising supported websites.




Oh.


arcturus

1,489 posts

262 months

Thursday 17th July 2003
quotequote all
IPAddis said:


....XP users should be covered by the built-in firewall?....


This is true to a certain extent but ZoneAlarm provides much better protection.

Why? Well the XP firewall only protects you against incoming threats which is good but not good enough. ZoneAlarm also protects you against outgoing threats.

What do I mean by this? Well say you receive an email that contains a Remote Access Trojan or RAT and your anti-virus software doesn't spot it. The RAT installs a back door on your machine that will then allow a malicious hacker to get into your computer without you knowing. To do this the RAT has to access the internet from inside your machine. Zone Alarm would prevent this from happening whereas the XP firewall would not.

Whilst I am aware that ZoneAlarm is not perfect and there are ways around it for the determined hacker, it is far better than nothing for most users.

Dave Clarke
www.arctsys.co.uk

IPAddis

2,470 posts

283 months

Thursday 17th July 2003
quotequote all
rsvnigel said:

IPAddis said:
Go to www.grc.com and run ShieldsUp and ProbeMyPorts (behave) to see how exposed (ahem) you really are.

The GRC scanner really stinks, norton isn't much better. Out of the vendors scanners the one at scan.sygate.com is probably the best of a bad bunch.


Well it isn't the best out there but it is free and it does give a good explaination of why ports should be closed and how to do so. The Sygate scan is probably better for techie users which is why I didn't mention it.

tvrtim

438 posts

261 months

Friday 18th July 2003
quotequote all
Robertuk, Thanks for mentioning the Google popup stopper. Works fine on Windows ME.
Put it on yesterday pm and it has stopped 41 at the moment.