Pop-ups!

Becky, This type of 'attack' can happen through various ways but lets see what we can do to help you. Can you tell me how the messages are popping up - is it through Windows Messenger or do you have pop ups through Internet Explorer ? What type of content is appearing on the pop ups ? Is it pointing to a particular website address ? Is there anything further you can tell me to help ? I do take it you have run your virus checker completely through your system....and that it is fully up to date ? If you can let me know I will see what I can find out to help remove this 'application' or 'script' from your system. Regards, Dean C2 Web Design http://www.c2webdesign.co.uk

Hi Becky Get the Google Toolbar http://toolbar.google.com/ That's what I use and I'm very happy with it. It is free, easy to install, from a well-known brand, and offers you several useful features: • Search the web with Google from any site • Eliminate pop-up ads • Fill in forms with one click • Highlight search terms on a page In case you need to see pop-ups in particular situation, you can also turn on/off the pop-up blocker anytime with a single click. Regards, mcpar

Sounds like you have some sort of adware on your pc. You should probably try Spybot which checks your pc for spyware and other malicious code. To download it, go to http://download.com.com/3000-2144-10194058.html?tag=lst-0-1 and then just run the file when it's downloaded. If you're asked which installation you want to use i.e. Easy or Advanced, select Easy. You will need to update it before you run it the first time. Double-click the icon on your desktop then click on Search for Updates. Once it's found the updates, click Download Updates to install them. You should do this at least once a month. Then click on Search & Destroy on the left, and then Check for Problems at the bottom. Once it's finished running it will show you a list of items it believes should be removed. Click on Fix Selected Problems to remove them. Hope that helps! Gary
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Indeed, SpyBot is the way to go this sort of thing. You might also try getting a different web browser. I can heartily recommend Mozilla Firefox as being fast, bug free, and it defaults to remove most of the web's annoyances (including pop-up ads). Avail yourself of this fine (and free) peice of software at: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ Phil
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Phil Royall
http://www.beardedfrog.com

Now this is useful to me! - Norton has told me I have six adware 'virus thingys' attached to my machine, yet it can't seem to delete them. So I too am plagued by pop ups - not as many as that, but enough to irritate me, so I'm downloading spybot as we speak. Lets hope it has the power to destroy them :-)) Regards Amanda
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Regards

Amanda


Truly Ace Graphic Design Blog


Logo Design I Web Design I Print Design

Thanks everyone! Dean the answer to your questions: - The pop-ups are coming through Windows Messenger, they seem to be a variety of topics, but mainly Viagra, explicit sex, porn ads and pop-ups about blocking pop-ups and how vulnerable my pc maybe, they seem to be the same pop-ups over and over. I am now receiving (spam) emails about the Viagra now with attachments, although I haven't opened them, I can make out what they are about from the subject heading and email adress. I have regularly ran the virus checker, I have since loaded Spybot and Ad-aware 6.0 and Pop-up Stopper Professional 6.0, But yet they still keep coming, the only thing the pop-up stopper does is flashes them up on the screen and closes them in there droves (as before I couldn't close them fast enough, they were queuing up behind each other) but doesn't seem to stop them downloading in the first place. The Spybot and Ad-aware both found 82 items between them and removed them. (But the free versions does not detect and destroy before downloading!) So they still keep coming. I was going to purchase the full version, but what if that doesn't work either because the free version sure isn't? The only ones I haven't yet tried is Mozilla Firefox web browser as suggested by Phil and Google toolbar by mcpar. I'm alittle concerned about messing around with browsers and search engines now, I was quite happy with what I was using up until a week ago! Amanda, I'd be curious to know if you had better luck than I have so far! Back over to you guys! Desparate!! Becky []

Becky, As good as the internet is its just soo annoying the way we are bombarded with stuff and rubbish that is of no interest to us and sometimes offensive. It's a shame that some people do go on a purchase these things - which in turn drives the spammers more ! Your problem is Windows Messenger - is your PC new ? Windows Messenger has been almost hijacked from spammers the World over due to its increasing ease to SPAM annoying adverts to you. The best thing to do is to disable Windows Messenger - which in turn will disable and stop those annoying pop ups. To disable Windows Messenger (which will not affect your PC) you need to do the following: Windows 2000: Click: Start/Settings/Control Panel Open: Administrative Tools Open: Services Open: 'Messenger' Service Click: Stop button Change 'Startup Type' to DISABLE Click OK to close everything Windows XP: Right-click: 'My Computer' icon and select 'Manager' Open: Services and Applications Open: Services Open: 'Messenger' Service Click: Stop button Change 'Startup Type' to DISABLE Click OK to close everything You will then find those annoying pop ups vanish ! I would imagine you have these problems due to the fact you are using Windows 2000 or Windows XP - people using Windows 98 or 95 do not seem to suffer these annoyances and unfortunately from what I have found out if you do use 98 or 95 it is extremely difficult if not impossible to turn off. The emails you are now receiving I believe will be unrelated to the pop ups and can be due to you entering your email address somewhere that is being used - or that your email address may appear on a website somewhere - and with the tricks and trades of spammers that are able to capture email addresses in their droves from websites around the World and SPAM them too ! I actually set up a brand new Hotmail account a few weeks ago and after signing up it went straight in to the email account, where you usually see your welcoming message, well I saw my welcome message plus 2 SPAM emails !! How on earth did they locate me so quick !?! Please let me know how you get on - and if the problem still continues let us know and we will see what we can do to help ! Best of luck ! Regards, Dean C2 Web Design http://www.c2webdesign.co.uk

Dean's absolutely right. When I had XP installed I couldn't understand how I wasn't able to turn off Messenger... and all that *&^*"?!ing popup spam - even my IT guy at the time didn't really know. But I knew I couldn't have been the first person to experience it, so I typed my question into Google and found the answer on a message board. So easy - but only when you find out how to do it! cheers Robin http://www.robinhoughton.com http://marketingkarma.co.uk
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Eggbox: Cracking Online Marketing
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To stop pop-ups try the alexa toolbar: [url]http://download.alexa.com/?amzn_id=digitalcame05-21[/url] Easy to use, install and best of all its FREE.
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