More Contemptible Than Spam?

[1milehgh80210]

[computoredge.com...]

[Mohamed_E]

That article says:

> Fortunately, there’s also a fix for us: You can simply turn off Windows Messenger.

How does one turn it off in WIN2K Pro? Apart from the obvious solution of migrating to Linux, but that is (for me) a long term strategy, not an immediate solution.

Thanks!

[Mohamed_E]

Google to the rescue! Got this URL in position #4 for stop "windows messenger":

[auburn.edu...]

Looks trivial, before I do it, is there any downside? I am the only user of my computer, no sysadmin to tell me that there will be downtime later today :)

[pat_s]

I did it a couple of weeks ago. So far so good. I don't think there's a downside.

[Learning Curve]

Hey, thanks so much for the tip. I wondered what the heck those things were.

I thought it was my high school kid's fault for using my business computer to go to gaming sites, after being warned a million times not to.

I guess it wasn't his fault at all.

[pat_s]

I was wondering why this was coming up all over the place all of a sudden and asked some of the administrators here at work. Apparently it's happening on cable systems. The thing is meant for administrators of a network to send out messages right to your desktop, usually within a company. Some clever people have figured out how to send out ads with it on cable systems.

[dcheney]

The downside of turning off the messenger service is that proper messages (from printers, servers, etc.) won't get through either. For home users that's not much of an issue. But for business settings it means you won't be told when the printer is out of paper/jammed, that the server is going down, or maybe the server power was cut and its running on a UPS, etc.

[Mohamed_E]

Thanks, dcheney! I knew that I had read somewhere that there was a downside, but forgot what it was. Yesterday I got two of those damned ads, happy to know that I can safely kill them.