Light grey Pop-Ups
 

I know this isn't travel related, but I've had a terrific problem with these for the past couple of weeks. I'll get 9 or 10 of them one right after another, and it makes working on something next to impossible. My Norton suite, which catches all other pop-ups, can't pick these up. Yesterday I installed a program called PopNot, and unfortunately it can't catch them either.<BR><BR>I visit only 3 internet locations on a daily basis and though I don't understand the concept behind this new phenomena, feel one of these 3 boards is responsible for this nuisance. I'm wondering if others here are bothered by the light grey pop-ups too? I suppose I could find the source by not visiting one of those boards on a given day and try that until the things stop, but thought I could perhaps learn something from anyone else's experiences here.

I don't get that many pop-ups from this site OliveOil. Morningstar.com is a different story! lol<BR>

ME TOO, we had our computer looked at and the repairman stated we had thousand of spy cams in our computer, which watched where we went and shared the info with others like a mailing list, we had other computer wiped free of these which also wiped out our memory and we had to reload everything. But it saved us from our 14y/o getting pop up info on how to make his sex life better!

I don't think it's this site. Sounds like spyware. Get a program called adaware and it should get it. Get it here:<BR><BR>http://www.lavasoft.de/

Paul, looking at Morningstar got to be too depressing, so that isn't one of the sites I frequent now. Just to see though after reading your note, I went over there and within seconds, PopNot was notifying me they had killed 3 Pop-ups. I'll say they are bad!<BR><BR>Does anyone know the mechanics behind this, especially the grey ones that elude other programs? Is it an internet cookie that allows these to appear on our screens? Once they start for the day, they continue off and on all day long. I've dumped internet cookies, (just in case that's how they get started), but of course as soon as you visit a site you pick up more, and some sites don't seem to allow your visit unless you have cookies enabled.

Loki...a friend of mine also mentioned adaware, so I'll try that. I'd hoped PopNot would do the trick.<BR><BR>Another friend locally who also gets these light grey pop ups uses MSN as an ISP. I don't, but one of my 3 normal sites is an MSN address. That's another possibility, but I thought I'd ask around as well. My 3rd site is BFT which I monitor for our hotel (and have found and corrected errors), but things are such there that there's no way I could even ask the question. :&gt; (Does anyone here also getting grey pop-ups do much with BFT?)

IF it is spyware, the way it works is it installs an application on your PC which runs constantly though you won't see it. It monitors everything you do online and even which applications you run offline. It then sends a constant stream back to it's home base and let's them know what you're doing. When it sees you go to ESPN.com, it may throw up a popup ad for a sporting goods store, etc.<BR><BR>I'm not familiar with the grey popup you describe but if it's spyware, you most likely got it while installing another seemingly legitimate application which comes piggybacked with spyware. If you downloaded anything for &quot;FREE&quot; on the net, chances are it may contain spyware, especially any file sharing software, almost all of them have it (i.e. Kazaa, etc.). Even the latest version of Turbo Tax was heavily criticized for having some piggybacked software but Intuit claims it's not spyware, many dispute that claim...

I just downloaded the &quot;adaware&quot; from Lavasoft and it located 132 pices of tracking software on my PC. Hopefully this will at least cut down on the ever increasing amout of pop-up ads I'm always getting.

You got me beat Harry. I only found 131, BUT I ran it a 2nd time and it found 24 more!? I'm using the free version for now, may pay for the real time version later. <BR><BR>I do use Kazaa Loki (thank you for your description of how the process works...rather unsettling!) and we of course just finished with Turbo Tax. That is just about the same time these things got so much worse, coincidentally~~ Interesting.<BR><BR>Harry you might try PopNot too. That did kill the 3 Morningstar PopUps that attempted to make an appearance the second I got into that site. If you got through the step-by-step on AdAware by the way, you'll find PopNot to be a snap! I'm always afraid I'll come out of an installation such as these and find my puter permanently frozen. :&gt; So far, all is well.

We now have adaware also, we had over 1000 spyware areas on our computer before cleanup.

This post really has my interest. We have the famous pop-ups constantly, and I too have wondered how to get rid of them. We do not have popnot or adaware. Can someone tell me if I should do both or one before the other. Also, how do I obtain them, through the internet or is it a program that you purchase?

I would be very interested in the answers to SR's questions. I don't know too much about computers and am afraid to load anything unless I'm very , very sure about it, incase I somehow 'ruin' my computer. But these popups have me worried, and even more so, the spyware. So I'd like to look after it.<BR>Thanks for any help....

It would be best to have both--they do different things. I've had no problems with my 'puter since installing them. Ad-Aware took more time to set up for the initial scan, but once done, it's set and you can tweak it as you become more comfortable with it's operation. I'm not computer literate, but have already felt comfortable enough to change some of the original settings and scan other drives than the original scan..then set it back again. Loki gave the address for AdAware, and here's an address where you can find the download for PopNot: http://www.hdsoft.com/?0.1.<BR><BR>Now, that said, neither of them fixed my &quot;grey&quot; Pop-up problem, but these are the only ones I get. I have a guru friend who was helping me yesterday...gave me the advice for both PopNot and AdAware, but then he tracked down the source of the grey pop-up problem, which is not the same as the full color version which PopNot will stop. <BR><BR>Here's a cut and paste of what he said for those who are interested: &quot;Click here for a good description of this new type of &quot;IP&quot; popup ads...they send their ad directly to your computer's IP address (such as 64.107.346.783, for example, not email addresses), which may be known, or just random shots in the dark. The IP addressing technique bypasses your browser and email. Every visit you make to a web page includes your IP address, so there's nothing you can do about hiding it from these scumbags&quot;. When he said &quot;click here&quot;, here is the link that he had embedded: http://61.129.75.229/~antimessage.co...cker/index.htm If you look at that, you'll see an example of what I mean by the &quot;grey pop-up&quot; as well as another description of what they are. Evidently there is something you can buy to block these but I'm not sure that's how I'll deal with them. The IP address by the way, is like your 'puter's fingerprint, identifying your particular 'puter.<BR><BR>Guru also said in another email that with DSL connections you have dynamic IP addresses which change all the time and you have to pay extra to have a static IP address. The dynamic address would limit this sort of attack to the period you have a particular address. He suggested I contact my IP and see if I could have a dynamic, rather than a static address I evidently have. I've got a dial-up connection and have no alternative but that in the hotel, unfortunately. Cable won't come onto the hotel grounds and DSL will not do anything on commercial property so I'm stuck with this dial-up, which evidently gives me a static address.

The firewall that came with my edition of Windows XP takes care of these pop-ups nicely, so I would think that there ought to be Norton firewalls that would do at least as well.

Thanks Olive . I'll have to sit down and really concentrate on this later today. Are both these programs free? I believe you said one was a free tril, so I'll go with it. Boy, it's time like this that I wish I know a whole lot more!!!

soccr, I have XP too (with all updates), as well as Norton Suite which includes Ad Blocker and kills all pop-ups but these. My Personal Firewall segment of Norton is set at &quot;medium&quot;, which &quot;protects my computer during ordinary internet use with occasional alerts&quot;. Any higher and I can't go anywhere in the internet without, Norton interfering with it's &quot;allow this blah blah to access your computer&quot; over and over and over again--hit yes and the message keeps on coming up, 5 maybe 6 times befor finally allowing a page to load! I tried setting it at high, and returned it to the middle setting within 2 minutes--at most! It was impossible.<BR><BR>Kodi, PopNot is free. The version of Ad Aware I'm using is free, but you have to manually run the scan with that version, as opposed to its operating real time with the pay version. The version I'm using is good enough for my needs I figure.

Thanks OliveOyl for the info. I'll have to download PopNot and Ad Aware and I'm also willing to run it manually.<BR><BR>BTW I did really enjoy my visit to Savannah, after all the help you provided. I did write a trip report when we got back, but it sunk to the bottom very quickly and I'm not sure if anyone saw it.<BR>Thanks again.

POP-UP STOPPER IS FREE AND CAN BE DOWNLOADED FROM WWW.PANICWARE.COM

Olive,<BR><BR>Being that you have dialup you should definitely have a dynamic IP. Statics are usually only with &quot;always on&quot; connection. You can find out by connecting to your ISP, the goto Start-All Programs-Accessories-MSDOS Promt<BR><BR>Then type &quot;ipconfig&quot; &lt;enter&gt;<BR><BR>It will tell you your IP address. Write it down. The next time you log on do the same and see if the 2 are the same. If not you are dynamic, your IP not your personality...

Just tested that Loki. Thanks! The IP address did change between log-ins, as did the default gateway (?). Subnet mask stayed the same. I'm clueless as to what any of that but the IP address means. So if this is a dynamic address, why am I getting these daily??<BR><BR>kodi...Thanks for writing a trip report--I'll look for it. I was out of town for a week and it may have appeared during that period. I'm glad you enjoyed your visit!

Olive, when you get the pop up, does it say &quot;messenger service&quot; and tell you about some school or something else like that? I used to get them but I disabled the messenger service. I have XP and went to my computer, control panel, performance and maintenance, administrative tools, services, and looked for messenger in the list. If it says enabled, thats your problem, double click messenger and disable it. That should take care of the problem if that is what the pop ups look like.

Freddie D...Yes, they did say Messenger service at the top. I had no idea that was a part or XP! I've just followed your steps and disabled it. Hopefully that will be the solution!! Now, in doing so, this is the warning I'm getting: &quot;Transmits net send and Alerter service messages between clients and servers. This service is not related to Windows Messenger. If this service is stopped, Alerter messages will not be transmitted. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it will fail to start.&quot; I trust I haven't disabled something I need? <BR><BR>I'd signed off and just signed back on again, as it occurred to me as I was getting ready for bed and trying to explain this to my dh, that anytime I signed back on, even though with a new IP address, if I visited whatever page was generating these, I'd just get them again at the new address, so it didn't really matter if it was dynamic or static...if I went back to the same site each day.

It's just telling you that it is not part of the Windows Messenger service, like the AOL instant messenger, but, instead is a messenger service for UNWANTED pop up adds. You haven't disabled anything you need, unless you wanted to find out more about the school they are advertising (that's the one I always seemed to get the most of!). Anyway, I disabled it several months ago and the only thing that changed was not getting those stupid gray message boxes! Glad it fixed your problem!

Thanks a bunch, Freddie.<BR>I hope that solves the problem.<BR>I've been as frustrated as OO lately.

No problem, glad I could help. Now, GO TO BED!! :-)

FreddieD...LOL, I've been in bed and lay there getting angrier and angrier thinking about this. No way I was going to sleep, until I got up and wrote something more. This is one example of why there is a fairly vocal contingent in the anti-Microsoft camp! :&lt; One of my son's IT friends absolutely refuses to use their operating system and uses as few of their programs as he can manage. I'm curious as to how on earth you knew about the existence of &quot;messenger&quot; and the steps needed to disable it? Thanks ever so much for taking the time to explain it. It has been a really frustrating past few weeks.<BR><BR>Compounding that aggravation with Microsoft is this: a friend that was trying to help me with this traced one ad to a point where he got the following information:<BR> <BR>&quot;Your IP is a unique Number like 24.48.214.32<BR>This number is unique to your computer.<BR>Anyone can take this number and send you spam messages.<BR>IP Ads Blocker eliminates this IP Pop Up Messenger spam.<BR>Have you ever had a message like this popup on your computer ?<BR><BR>[It then shows one of thegrey messenger service pop-ups]<BR><BR> Congratulations, you've been hit by the newest form of unwanted advertising, or spam - Direct IP Advertising. A recent article in Cnet states that 30% to 80% of spam attacks today are caused by IP Messaging. This message was sent to your computer through a built in feature that Microsoft included in your copy of Windows 2000, NT, or XP. These types of spam messages are worse than unwanted e-mail since you don't even need to have an e-mail account or web browser. If you are one of the millions of people who get unwanted messages like these everyday, there is hope.<BR><BR> <BR><BR>Here are some of the features of IP Ads Blocker:<BR><BR>Simple one-click access to complete protection against Messenger pop-up ads. <BR>Guaranteed to stop any kind of Messenger pop-up no matter what software is used to send it. <BR>FAQ's about Direct IP advertising:<BR><BR>Direct IP Spam is the fastest growing type of unsolicited advertising on the Internet today! It has been recorded as growing as much as 1500% a month. <BR>ISPs and governments are powerless to stop it. There are no laws governing these types of messages. If you can trace down the sender of these pop ups, there is no legal way to stop them! <BR>IP Ads Blocker can help you block these ads.&quot;<BR><BR>SO, tell you it's a built in feature of several opeating systems, and they'll *sell* you &quot;ad blocker&quot; for the messenger Pop-Ups for $30 when undoubtedly they *know* all you need do is disable that blasted Messenger! That sort of promotion is NOT conducive to going to sleep!! <BR><BR>Again Freddie, thanks so much for your help and I hope others have benefitted as well. Spread the word you all!<BR><BR>Now...I'm going to sleep!!<BR> <BR>

Yes, the add pops up to tell you what operating system you have, your IP address, etc.? I don't get them as often, only on certain websites. <BR><BR>Anyhoo, I had had it up to my ears with the &quot;messenger service&quot; so I did a Yahoo search for &quot;messenger service&quot; until I found a link that told me how to disable it. Just to make sure it wasn't filling me with bull, I went to the Microsoft web page and searched for Messenger Service to make sure it was one of their programs and read about the service and how to disable it. I followed the steps and it worked! I just did this for my sister-in-law the other day so the steps were pretty fresh in my head. Believe me, I wasn't going to give up until I found out what in the world I could do to stop this. <BR><BR>I would also get these messages from &quot;Save Now&quot; trying to get me to search other travel sites, etc. when I visited Orbitz or Hotels.com. I went into my add/remove programs and sure enough, it was there as an installed program, probably from some free software I had downloaded, and I removed it! That took care of that little problem as well. These adds are grey too but the top of them reads &quot;Save Now&quot; in bright, neon green. If you get those, make sure to uninstall this program from add/remove. <BR><BR>I'm actually glad I came across your post because I have no clue about Firewall protection nor did I know that XP has one built in. I read someone's reply about how Firewall stops MOST pop up adds, so I searched for how to enable the Firewall and followed the steps. I visited a website that shoots pop up after pop up after I enabled the protection and it worked!

okay, since we seem tohave some smart people here, I have another irritating problem. there is a real player icon down in the bottom (task?)bar on the right (near the volume icon. Periodically it starts blinking, and slows my computer down to a crawl. If I click on it it reminds me to update my real player. I can shut it then, but it comes back every 5 hours or so. Any ideas?

Thanks everyone for all the information. <BR> <BR>FreddieD: I have XP and disabled the Messenger Service and also deleted the &quot;Save Now&quot;. Great advise ! Can you also tell us how to enable the Firewall protection. I've searched all morning and can't figure it out. Thanks !

I am soo tired, so hope I make sense in this note. I woke up this AM at 5:30, dying to see if the fix had worked. So far so good. BUT...a friend who I'd told of the fix, said something that made me decide to delve more deeply into Microsoft's pages, and I've learned something more that may be important. &quot;Messenger&quot; WAS initially included in XP, NT, and Windows 2000 for a purpose--not to allow advertisers to access our computers. If you are part of a network, it allows the network administrator to send messages to networked computers. Also, it said that anti-virus programs may use this to notify you. That aspect worries me. Click this link to read more about the pop up problem and solutions: http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;330904. <BR><BR>FreddieD's cure is found as the &quot;work around&quot; in this link, but if you read the link, you'll see they recommend instead enabling Microsoft's firewall which was part of a service pack. This link describes how to enable the firewall: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;283673.<BR><BR>Interestingly, soccr mentioned Microsoft's firewall in his note above. I'd written that off because Norton's firewall which I had and assumed was as good, did nothing for this problem. Microsoft's firewall, which evidently is differnt, had to be manually enabled on my puter, (did so this morning) so you might check your settings and enable it if it hasn't been done. <BR><BR>I'm going to leave &quot;messenger&quot; disabled for the time being, but later when I rest up (my mind feels like mush after last night) I might try enabling &quot;Messenger&quot; again (simply because I worry about anti virus notification), leaving the firewall on and seeing what happens.<BR><BR>Again...thanks to everyone who helped, and to Fodors for letting this note stand. Those pop-ups were making it impossible to get much done once they began! Do spread the word on the cure(s)!

Icuy,<BR><BR>Real PLayer is a program which allows you to get sound and video clips from websites. If you didn't install it intentionally, it was probably piggy backed with something else, AOL maybe? If you don't need it, go to Start-Control Panel-Add/Remove Programs- choose real plaer-click &quot;Remove&quot;<BR><BR>If you remove it and find that you needed it, you can always just download it again.

Olive, I read that too when I was doing my research on the program. Since I am not connected to a network, I wasn't worried about getting messages from Admin. I also read that it IS for advertisers to access your PC. Go back to the services area and just place your arrow on the messenger and read what it says, it tells you its a form of advertisement. I would really rather not have it. It hasn't affected my PC in anyway, except to not get those irritating Pop ups.<BR><BR>Also, I have Norton Anti-Virus. Someone tried to send me a virus via email and Norton had it's own messenger pop up to inform me. It also pops up when &quot;live update&quot; is ready to run, or when it has any other messages for me. I have had no trouble receiving messages from Norton after disabling messenger.<BR><BR>Lcuy, when real player starts blinking on my pc, I right click the icon and choose exit the program, I believe (It's not blinking right now so I am not sure) Anyway, that usually stops the blinking completely.

SR, to enable your firewall, make sure you have XP. Click start, my network places, view network connections. Right click on the connection icon(mine says LAN or High Speed Internet because I am on a cable modem), properties, advanced, if your firewall is already enabled the check will be in the box that reads &quot;Protect my computer and network by limiting or preventing access to this computer from the internet&quot;. You have just enabled your firewall. If the box is already checked, your firewall is already enabled.<BR><BR>I sat around last night and went through the service and support section of my PC (it's a Dell) and searched for things and found out so much stuff! I ran the disk defrag (to clean up any holes left from uninstalled programs, free up space and make the PC run faster) and checked my hard drive for errors. Needless to say, I was up until after 3:00 AM!

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/communicate/stopspam.asp<BR><BR>Here is the link to the site I was looking at incase you can't find it.

Correct FreddieD...it does allow advertisers to access our computers, but I don't think that was the original intent. I believe it was there to let network admins talk with their computers then advertisers found the weakness and exploited it. So far so good. I've had nothing and what a relief that is.<BR><BR>The only reason I would enable Messenger now was my concern about Norton being able to notify me for any reason, but if it still works for you, then it will for me too. This computer isn't networked either so the other isn't a problem for me. <BR><BR>I figure I had about 4 hrs sleep between staying up late to fix this, then uanble to sleep because I was angry, then awake this morning early to see if it really was fixed! I'm tired! We could have all just had a party last night~~ :&gt;<BR><BR>It's still very aggravating to think people are trying to sell a fix to this problem when the fix is something we can do ourselves, free.<BR><BR>There outta be a law. (Did I say that already...yawn? :&gt;)

OliveOyl - Since I am using Windows ME edition I would like to hear from others if they have found a similiar fix for this operating system. Couldn't agree more that THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW !!!! ;) .

HarryR, my mom uses Windows ME and she says she doesn't get these pop ups from the messenger service, however, my sister-in-law operates Windows 2000 and does. I told my mom today that I would come and see if she has it. You can also go onto the Microsoft web page and search for Windows Messenger on Windows ME info page.

Harry, supposedly only computers with Windows 2000, XP and NT are subject to the &quot;messenger service&quot; Pop-ups. Might you have the garden variety that PopNot will stop?

FreddieD, Mine are GONE! You did it. I can't thank you enough.