Sick Of Microsoft Violating My Privacy

My rant about the latest way microsoft can violate your privacy

[chris_f]

I run Windows XP. I have finally had enough. Recently, I have been receiving popups from apparently out of nowhere.

I first thought it was coming from MSN Instant Messenger. However, after unistalling it they contined. Hmmmmm. Windows Message Possibly? I removed that as well. Guess what. The Popups continued. I scanned for a virus, no luck.

I finally got sick of them today. I did a search and bingo. I'm not the only one. If any of you out there are also getting the popups then they are coming from the 'messager' service. If you wish to stop the popups then the instructions are here [windowplanet.net].

I, for one, am (extremely angry but cant use the words here) about this. I think this is the final straw that will convince me to change.

Chris

[Pinetree]

Many popups are a Javascript "time bomb" that appear lonf after you leave the site that they originate from.

Opera's browser has excellent Popup control.

[snowman]

Geez, M$oft is still causing people headaches (I say to myself as I type this on my Mac)?

[4eyes]

Pinetree - these are not pop-ups seen through your browser, they are far nastier than that.

The pop-ups happen whether your browser is open or not:(

Nasty - very nasty

[chris_f]

4eyes,

You have hit the nail on the head. The only requirements are that you are online and that you run WinXP or Win2K.

Chris

[lawman]

Thanks for the tip chris_f. Sometimes the boxes that pop up are for risque material. My 6 year old is online quite a bit. I hope the fix works.

lawman

[Conard]

It's part of a lame "service" for admins to message all users of a network. Microsoft was asked to disable the "feature" a month after XP was released. The reply was it would be to hard for the average user to turn the feature on if they wanted to use it.
Doha....and how about the average user being able to turn it off?

[electro]

Yeh, I came across these a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure, but I think one even messed up my machine a bit (I had to reset my bios after a crash). I only noticed them when I had turned off my firewall.I do think that M$ have to get a grip here, but I also think that the people that do this type of exploit are the lowest of the low.

[Triple_H]

can't you download advent browser, which blocks popups better than many popup-killer programs out there?

[OntheEdge]

Thanks,Chris I haven't had any trouble with it (as far as I know), but have disabled it anyways.

[rcjordan]

>I haven't had any trouble with it (as far as I know), but have disabled it anyways.

Ditto.

[c3oc3o]

Triple_H, it's not a web popup, and therefore won't be stopped by popup blockers.
If you have XP, type "net send 127.0.0.1 test" in the start>run box. If you haven't disabled the messenger service, you'll get a popup with the text "test" after a second or two -- those are the ones he's talking about.

[daroz]

Also a good tool to remove some of the ad/spyware you'll come across is a program called adaware. (A search will help you find it). Comes in a free and a professional edition.

(Not affiliated with them in any way - just trying to help out)

[Triple_H]

Hi, c3oc3o
I have Win XP, and I diabled windows messenger as start-up. However, the IE browser crashes a lot on me :(

[Dreamquick]

If you are behind a firewall/router which blocks netbios messages then this cease to be a problem, ditto for a software firewall. Only time I've ever seen one of these is when I shut it off one day to test something...

You can't rely on MS to fix non-fatal flaws for you - they have enough trouble with the fatal stuff. Plus some things they just can "cope" with yet - like the idea that consumer machines need to be differently configured than corporate machines because the security / support infrastructure is so vastly different.

- Tony