If you are using Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, XP or any of the Microsoft server products, you will be able to receive these messages by default because of the Messenger service that runs when your computer starts. Windows 9x machines will not receive the messages unless they have the WinPopup program running. Would you consider this another new form of spam? Spam by any other name is still spam so let’s call it what it is. They have just found another way to get to us. We need to get a hold on this before our screens at work and the house start to resemble the filth that is filling our e-mail boxes these days.

This Messenger service has been used for years by Network administrators to send a message to all the users on the network about server maintenance or downtime. It is not used as much now with the wide spread use of e-mail. You could test this on your home network but it would probably not be a good idea to play with it at the office.

You can run the command from the run line but you will need to use to command prompt to see what you are doing. Let’s test this little jewel. Click on Start, Run and type cmd and then click on OK. This will open a command prompt window. At the prompt type “net send * Network message sent.” without the quotation marks, and press enter on your keyboard. This will yield the pop up message with your computer name and domain name. If you want to know some more info on options that are available with the command you can type “net help send” at the command prompt to get the help file associated with the command.

The tool is still there but you can stop these types of ads by disabling the service on your system. As always, don’t try this at work without consulting with your IT department. If you are the IT department, then consider yourself consulted. To turn the service off you need to click on Administrative Tools from within Control Panel. Click on Services and scroll down to Messenger. Double click on Messenger to view the options that are available. Click on Stop to stop the service and then change the Startup Type to Manual or Disabled. Click on Ok and you will be finished with the IP based spam until they find another way to find you.

If you don’t want to turn the service off within your internal network you will need to configure your firewall to block incoming UDP and NetBIOS requests. 

Now let’s take a look at stopping the rest of the popup Web pages that irritate and slow us down on our Web journeys. There is actually a Web site that is devoted to rating Popup killers and stoppers. The address of the site is <http://popup-killer.info/>. They have a pretty good explanation of the difference between the killers and stoppers. There is also a review of some of the better programs that are available.

If you are going to use one of these programs you need to look at the reviews and be sure that the program that you choose will not interfere with the surfing that you need to do. There are a number of sites that use Popup windows as a part of theirs page. One example would be the address book on the Yahoo mail page. If you are going to use a Popup stopper you need to be able to disable it when you choose to. Otherwise these types of pages where you need the window to popup won’t work.

The highest rated program on the list is called Popnot and is written by High-Density Software <http://www.hdsoft.com/>. The program seems to have all of the features that you would like to see in a Popup stopper program. There is a 15 day evaluation version that is available and then the program costs $19.95 for a single user. It is easy to turn on and off and there are hot keys to temporarily override the program. There is also an allow list for the sites that you need to have popups on. One pretty cool feature is the ability to view the Address and Status bar for popup pages with a Hot Key as well as to set them to show up by default.

Whatever you choose to do about the popup ads is just that, your choice. As long as you are making the decision whether to receive the ads or not is fine as long as you have the ability to make the choice. These popup stopper programs will put the choice back in your hands.