FTC Shuts Down Pop-Up Extortion Firm

An anonymous reader writes "The FTC has shut down D Squared, a company that's been spamming via the Windows Messenger Pop-Up Service. In some cases, ads would pop-up every 10 minutes, and only advertised a $30 product that disabled similar pop-up ads. The FTC is slamming the extortion gauntlet on them. Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed."

Comments

I wonder what their email addresses are...

[delirium28]

Maybe we can get them to shut down the spammers next...

one of their own commissioners...

[Threni]

"Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed."

There's a lesson for us all, there.

Re:one of their own commissioners...

[tomhudson]

Yep, so much for government of the people, by the people, for the people. It's only when their self-interest gets nicked that they move their lardarses. Lets hope some of them lose money on $CO..

Re:one of their own commissioners...

[tomhudson]

Poster wrote:

How do you do counterfeiting "in a small way"?

Counterfeit pennies?

Re:one of their own commissioners...

[GreyPoopon]

"Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed."

There's a lesson for us all, there.

Before we wander off into knee-jerk madness, let me remove the contextual spin from this. The actual quote is below.

Part of the reason Windows Messenger pop-ups caught the attention of the FTC is that one of the agency's commissioners received one of the advertisements at home, Beales said. But the FTC also received numerous complaints from consumers.

I take this to mean that having a PERSONAL experience helped to raise the priority. I would be shocked to find out that a personal experience by one of the commissioners isn't worth at least thousand complaints from the user community. I can't think of one organization where this rule does not apply. Had the commissioner not encountered this personally, I think the priority would have still been raised with enough user complaints.

Not quite right.

[Delphix]

"POP-UP ADVERTISING is a fact of life," said Howard Beales, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "But one company has taken pop-ups beyond annoyance."

No it's not. I use Safari (Mac OS) and Mozilla (Linux/Windows) for all my web browsing. And I use Trillian, Gaim, or Fire for IM.

So no, POP-UP Advertising is deifnetly not a fact of life. It's just that too many people are unaware how easy it is to get away from.

Re:Not quite right.

[zymurgyboy]

The article is talking about exploiting the Windows Messenger service, not instant messenger or using equally irritating and far more common web browser based pop-up ads.

This would be more accurately classed as yet another stupid on-by-default, security-decreasing idiocy on the part of Microsoft. Why the OS would install with this on by default is a mystery to me.

I'm just glad MS didn't decide to remove it from future versions of the Windows. I've actually used this feature at work and found it quite useful.

For instance, I've had to sit in on training classes as few times that one of our vendors was putting on for some of our users. It was a fly-on-the-wall type thing; I was there to get feedback from our users, primarily.

A few times some configuration shortcomming became apparent and people would start wispering to each other. Rather than let it go and wreck the class, I quickly fixed the problems on each machine in the room and sent one of these messages to each PC in the room, telling them it was fixed.

I didn't have to stop the guest trainer, I didn't have walk over and stop anyone from paying attention to him, and I could I easily communicate that the problem was identified and resolved. It was sort of cool.

Normally I would have just e-mailed them, but we don't have users use their accounts in training, none of the training accounts have mailboxes.

That's how it should be used, I think. Too bad the FTC doesn't take as much interest in browser pop-up advertisers. I've seen IE popup ads for this crap. Which appears to be similar in concept only the delivery is through a different pop-up. The product/service looks just about as useless. You could accomplish everything they're trying sell you on with add/remove programs and dumping IE for a browser that deoesn't subject you to this type of torture.

Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[Accord MT]

Shame on us! We are intruded upon every day and no one complains. Hour by hour, our eyes and ears are bombarded with advertisements, but we accept it all as a fact of life. Why do we allow this tresspass into our daily lives? Why is it considered acceptable to allow companies to push products in our faces every second of every day? Why don't we have laws against advertising?

If someone dumps raw sewage in the streets, the cops will take them away. If someone plays their boom-box too loud in my neighborhood, they will eventually be fined. So why do we allow billboards, huge store signs, and ads on cars, busses, and park benches to pollute our visual environment?

I should be able to go for a walk or ride my bike outside without having to endure constant sales pitches, without having huge logos and brand names all over the place. Don't you agree? Is some corporation's desire to sell a product really more important than our desire of a peaceful environment?

If I stood outside your house all day shouting "Buy My Product!!!" over and over you'd get kind of angry wouldn't you? So why don't you get angry when corporations do the same thing via huge billboards? What exactly is the difference?

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[kfg]

. . .ride my bike outside without having to endure constant sales pitches, without having huge logos and brand names all over the place.

Actually, this is a pretty good description of the appearance of most of the bike riders I see these days.

KFG

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[dillon_rinker]

What exactly is the difference?
1. Humans have free speech
2. Corporations are legally human
3. ???
4. PROFIT! (Seriously. If you can declare a personal income of several billion a year, YOU TOO can engage in free speech.)

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[Quasar1999]

Your argument is flawed. I am not forced to look at ads on billboards, or even tv... I am forced to listen to you yelling buy my product, and a boombox, etc...

The difference with pop-up ads, is they are unwanted, and cannot be ignored... If I go to a website with pop-ups, and I don't like them, I can never come back... but with this pop-up advertising, they were there, without any action on my part, and directly interrupted me.

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[jazman_777]

What exactly is the difference?

Billboards are not a violation of anyone's property rights. They may be an aesthetic offense, but that is what life in the USA is all about these days, is it not? Looking like a slob is one of our fundamental rights.

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[fmaxwell]

Shame on us! We are intruded upon every day and no one complains. Hour by hour, our eyes and ears are bombarded with advertisements, but we accept it all as a fact of life.

The key difference here is that you paid for your PC and no advertiser, whether a spammer or a pop-up advertiser, has a right to steal your bandwidth or storage.

Don't like ads while listening to the radio? Then pay for satellite radio and listen to ad-free stations. Don't like ads during movies you view on TV? Then watch the movies on pay-per-view. But it's idiotic to watch a television station to which you send no money and then get mad that they show ads. Of course they show ads! It's how they finance the operation of their television station.

If you don't like a billboard, then buy the property on which it is located and tear down the billboard. But you are hard-pressed to claim that the billboard interfered with your work or cost you money.

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[Nasarius]

The difference is commercial speech, which is subject to all sorts of restrictions that things like political speech are not. Google for "commercial speech", check out some of the Supreme Court cases.

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[forgetmenot]

*sigh*.. Ok. One of the differences is that some of the facilities bearing the ads are only there because of the ads. The serenity of the park might be spoiled by an ad-bearing bench, but without the ad there might not even be a bench, or if there was you might have paid for it with tax dollars or worse, and admission fee to the park. These things don't grow on trees. Someone has to pay for them, and if Nike will do that in exchange for having there logo on the bench, fine. At least I have somewhere to sit when my feet get tired. Same goes for ads on public transit. Ads are just one way of paying the high costs of public transit in order to make it affordable to the general public. So, not all ads are bad. I do however, cringe at the ads in public washrooms... but if the removal of the ads means no place to crap, well... I guess I can live with it.

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[NanoGator]

"Shame on us! We are intruded upon every day and no one complains."

People complain all the time. Perhaps you are unaware of software like pop-up blockers, spam killers, and TiVo?

"Why do we allow this tresspass into our daily lives?"

They're not boring into my skull, they're throwing up info where I might see it. Ultimately, it's still my choice to watch the commercial or go take a leak. It really isn't that big of deal.

"Why is it considered acceptable to allow companies to push products in our faces every second of every day?"

Don't confuse branding with advertising. I have a few major name brands on my desk right now. Aquafina, Dell, HP, IBM, etc. They're not bombarding me. They are recognizable because they are unique objects. So yeah, I see branded stuff all the time, but bombarding would be an exaggeration. Maybe if the dell logo on my laptop lit up and blinked or something.

"Why don't we have laws against advertising?"

They have regulations about advertising. A couple of months ago I caught a story on TV about an area of New York where they cracked down on storefronts with overly obnoxious signs. Awnings could only be so far out, only so many symbols could be used etc. So yes, there are practical limits to advertising.

The reason why it's not illegall altogether is because advertisements are passive. You are not strapped to your seat with your eyes forced open. Besides that, those advertisements are the reason you're able to get on here and post your knee-jerk rant.

Advertising is obnoxious a lot of the time. No offense, but your rant against it is quite nutty. Case in point:

"If someone dumps raw sewage in the streets, the cops will take them away. If someone plays their boom-box too loud in my neighborhood, they will eventually be fined. So why do we allow billboards, huge store signs, and ads on cars, busses, and park benches to pollute our visual environment?"

You're likening a billboard to sewage dumped on the street. A billboard does not pose a health risk. It is not dumped anywhere, a permit is required to put it up. There are regulations that govern how big the sign is, how bright it is, how blinkie it is, and even the words that are written on it are regulated. All that's being done is a sign is being placed where you might see it. You might even find useful information on it. It's there to look at, it's not forced upon you. It's not like somebody's standing outside of your house all day shouting "Buy My Product!" over and over, causing you to get kind of angry.

I'm genuinely surprised you were modded up here. If you'd left it at "why isn't advertising regulated to be less distrating?" I'd have been in full support of your statement. But, honestly dude, not knowing why a billboard is okay but shouting in front of somebody's house isn't?

Chill.

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[dominion]

So poor people are the only ones who can't complain about ads in their neighborhood?

A piece of property with a billboard on it in Chicago costs tens of thousands of dollars. I can't afford that, neither can anybody in my neighborhood.

How else do we deal with our polluted visual environment?

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[ivan256]

Humans have free speech

You're taking free speech too literally. Obviously you've never seen sombody (or been) taken away for causing a public disturbance. Free speech isn't, and shouldn't be, absolute. Advertisers shouldn't have the right to pop whatever they want up on my computer screen any more than you should have the right to scream out loudly, obnoxiously, and continually in a public (or private and not belonging to you) space.

In the US, the first amendment uses the words "freedom of speech", but in no way defines speech, and in the same sentence limits the right of assembly with the term "peaceably". It could easily be argued (and has been in some cases) that certain things aren't considered "speech" depending on which definition you choose (there are 6 or more definitions depending on which dictionary you happen to look in), and that some things which are speech aren't considered protected under certain circumstances (i.e. you have the right to convey a message, but not necicarily in every forum and in any manner).

Outside the US there are many places where freedom of speech is not available, whether you're human or not.

This all manages to be the case independant of how much money you have.

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[letxa2000]

If you don't like a billboard, then buy the property on which it is located and tear down the billboard. But you are hard-pressed to claim that the billboard interfered with your work or cost you money.

It's funny seeing people not complain about billboards or saying that they are ok. These are people that haven't lived in a BBRE (BillBoard Rich Environment).

As I said elsewhere in this thread, move to Mexico for awhile. There are days I literally feel claustrophobic because of the saturation of the skyline (at all levels... ground level, 30 feet, 100 fet) with advertisements. Yes, I tune them out. You HAVE to tune them out. They've gone past the point of "they don't notice it but will remember it subconsciously." There are so many that they are just a blur of color as you drive by... They're on corners, on tops of residential and commercial rooftops, on stand-alone supports that some business decided to mount in the middle of their microscopic parking lot, painted on brick walls, hanging from or mounted above pedestrian bridges, overpasses--and most of them are at least partially blocked by other billboards anyway. It's like being in Time Square but without the general coolness and flashing lights that makes Time Square cool rather than an advertising eyesore.

Really... It's something I think every politician in the U.S. should have as part of their "initiation" or "orientation." Live in Mexico for a week and truly observe how bad advertising can be if not carefully checked.

I'm not sure if there's less advertising in the U.S. than in Mexico because advertisers intentionally don't want to saturate to this level and numb everyone completely or because the local governments *DO* have a decent level of restriction that prevents it from getting this bad.

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[Stiletto]

There is no difference. It comes down to money.

If you're rich enough, you can dump raw sewage in the streets, or dump needles in the ocean, or dump toxic chemicals in the rivers.

If you're rich enough, you can drive down the street blasting ads, sales pitches, sound bites, corporate jingles, and not have to worry about anything.

If you're rich enough, you can fill every inch of the earth up with your important sales message.

Because after all, the economy is the most important thing in the world. If it wasn't for money, the earth would blow up tomorrow!!

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[Tin Foil Hat]

But you are hard-pressed to claim that the billboard interfered with your work or cost you money.

He never claimed that. He's claiming that the billboard has cost him peace of mind that he might have had had there been no billboard. It's an intangible, but an important one. People like to live and work in pleasant surroundings. Why should we let others impinge on that for no other purpose than to hawk their products?

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[Haeleth]

> Does it do active X yet?

No, it doesn't. However, there is a plugin which allows you to open the current page (or a link) in Internet Explorer, from the right-click context menu. So you could easily switch to Firebird for your primary browser, and still view your company's ActiveX pages without any significant extra effort.

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[mindstrm]

No, the real point is ethics.

They should not be exploiting bugs in windows in order to display ads on my screen.
When I browse the web, I understand that a site may choose to show me an ad. I'm looking for content.

A winpopup is another matter entirely.

Furthermore, using these invasive, exploitive winpopups to advertise a product that BLOCKS winpopups is extortion.

it's "Pay us to stop doing this".

IT's not at all beneficial to society.

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[laird]

"My current job is supporting a website that uses pop-ups to display menus, etc. I didn't design it. I have no say in how to improve it. I just have to sit on the phone and tell people to disable their pop-up blockers."

You should do some quick cost estimation encourage someone in a decision making capacity at the company to consider whether the costs to the company in customer support and in lost customers possibly outweighs whatever advantage there is to the current design.

Aside from that, using pop-ups for navigation seems like an amazingly bad idea. But saying that probably would alienate the designers without changing anyone's mind. "costing the company money" is a much better business argument than "sucks".

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[nelsonal]

Economics is the study of a very complex system, and the explination of that study through simplistic models that are used to predict the outcomes of the system. In this way it is like physics, but at a much earlier stage of understanding. Think chemistry during the days of the alchemists, they were making progress, but were going about it in a very slow fashion. If the models don't assume perfect information, they don't work correctly, even though it doesn't take a very observant economist to see that perfect information is a pretty poor assumption. So just as the current model for gravity doesn't explain everything down at quantum level (or even for Voyager I, apparently), it is close enough for many purposes, and useful. Economic models are close enough for many useful purposes, although they are under much more gross refinement. There are many sharp economists wondering why there is so much ad spending, given that the assumption of perfect knowledge works so well.

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[cpt kangarooski]

You can't walk up to a 5 year old and start swearing at the top of your lungs

Actually, yes you can.

or tell every woman you meet that you'll be raping her later tonight.

Again, you can, though since rape is criminal, a significant factor will be whether you meant it, and whether they think you mean it. If there were no real likelihood of a threat (e.g. you're just some schmuck with Tourette's) then it's not regulable.

I think you should really read the famous case of Cohen v. California, 403 US 15 (1971), and probably Brandenberg v. Ohio, 395 US 444 (1969).

The ONLY reason advertising is allowed is because we, as a society, permit it. It has nothing to do with some absolute concept of "free speech" that doesn't exist in any country I've ever heard of.

Well, then listen up:

The First Amendment ... protects commercial speech from unwarranted governmental regulation. Commercial expression not only serves the economic interest of the speaker, but also assists consumers and furthers the societal interest in the fullest possible dissemination of information. In applying the First Amendment to this area, we have rejected the "highly paternalistic" view that government has complete power to suppress or regulate commercial speech. "[P]eople will perceive their own best interests if only they are well enough informed, and . . . the best means to that end is to open the channels of communication rather than to close them. . . ." Even when advertising communicates only an incomplete version of the relevant facts, the First Amendment presumes that some accurate information is better than no information at all.

That was the Supreme Court in Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Comm'n, 447 U.S. 557 (1980).

I'm beginning to wonder if you know anything about First Amendment law whatsoever.

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[bryanthompson]

why do we allow billboards, huge store signs, and ads on cars, busses, and park benches to pollute our visual environment?

Why do we allow fat people on a beach to pollute my visual environment? It's no more rediculous than your assertion that billboards and signs pollute your visual environment.

There's a difference between ligit advertisement and intrusive advertisements. It used to be just snail-mail junk-mail type spam. Then it was fax-spamming. Then it was email spam. I don't even know all the kinds there are now. I just heard about bluetooth messaging spam to cell phones the other day. it's insane. The point is, not all advertisements are bad. The bad ones are ones that use YOUR property and resources illegally.

AOL reconfigures your system... ok, fine

[RobertB-DC]

You know, when I saw in the article that AOL was automatically turning off users' Messenger Service, I wondered if that was stepping over the line. After all, we Slashdotters *hate* it when someone messes with our configuration without our permission!

Then, I read the process, and remembered doing the same thing to turn off the oh-so-obvious "Your print job is complete" messages from the laser printer in the next cube. It would be so easy for a non-geek to either screw up or freeze like a deer in the headlights:

Beales recommends that current Windows users manually shut the service off to protect themselves from unwanted pop-ups.
To disable Messenger:
* Click Start, and then click Control Panel (or point to Settings, and then click Control Panel).
* Double-click Administrative Tools.
* Double-click Services.
* Double-click Messenger.
* In the Startup type list, click Disabled. Click Stop, and then click OK.

Not to stereotype AOLers, but considering what their tech support would face if newbies were given those instructions, I think they did the right thing to shut off a service that nobody uses anyway.

I'm trying to think of why the Messenger Service was a good thing in the first place. I recall way back before Win95, we used to prank each other with dire "system messages". Was that all it was ever good for?

Re:AOL reconfigures your system... ok, fine

[TopShelf]

The merits of Messenger Service may be debatable, but the fact that it is activated by default in Windows installs is downright absurd...

These are annoying

[Pingular]

The popups are annoying, but they can easily be blocked by installing Zonealarm, or any other good firewall.

Re:These are annoying

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, instead of clicking on you non-working link to install a pile of shit annoyance on your already resource-choked Windows machine, how about just disabling the Windows Messenger service?

You don't have precious seconds to waste by clicking the preview button, but you're reading Slashdot?

Re:These are annoying

[Pingular]

The incorrect link was a typo, anyone reading the link would be able to go to the right address themselves. If you think you should disable the messenger service instead (although this would still leave you open to attacks from hackers, and I strongly recommend the use of a decent firewall aswell) the following steps can be taken:

Windows 2000

1. Click Start-> Settings-> Control Panel-> Administrative Tools->Services
2. Scroll down and highlight "Messenger"
3. Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
4. Click the STOP button.
5. Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
6. Click OK

Windows XP Home

1. Click Start->Settings ->Control Panel
2. Click Performance and Maintenance
3. Click Administrative Tools
4. Double click Services Scroll
5. down and highlight "Messenger"
6. Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
7. Click the STOP button.
8. Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
9. Click OK

Windows XP Professional

1. Click Start->Settings ->Control Panel
2. Click Administrative Tools
3. Click Services
4. Double click Services Scroll
5. down and highlight "Messenger"
6. Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
7. Click the STOP button.
8. Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
9. Click OK

Windows NT

1. Click Start ->Control Panel
2. Double Click Administrative Tools
3. Select Services-> Double-click on Messenger
4. In the Messenger Properties window, select Stop,
5. Then choose Disable as the Startup Type
6. Click OK

In all other versions of windows the service cannot be disabled.

RTFA

[Paulo]

They are talking about "Windows Messenger", which has nothing to do with web browsers.

Full FTC press release

[John3]

is here.

Targets

[rf0]

Well this is like the story a few days ago about an FBI agent who was spammed about a credit card scam and got the women arrested. Prehaps things like the FTC should have one individual who they try to get on every mailing list / get target by spammers. Least that way something could be done

Rus

Re:Targets

[CKW]

Or we should find out who this one individual is, and get him on ever single spam list and fraudster's radar.

Him and all the exec's at the big companies. Then make sure the CTO's are "properly advised" by their head techies as to what needs to be done:

aka:

- don't buy Microsoft
- co-operate and support an IETF standard on authenticated e-mail
- etc etc.

No, it does not

[wowbagger]

This is not about Javascript pop-up ads, this is about the Windows Messenger service, which is a service that listens to a different port, and will pop up a dialog box when it receives a message from the wire.

This is similar to the service that Novell used to have, and the purpose is for local sysadmins to send out messages like "Server going down in 5 minutes, save your work and log out".

You could have your browser closed, and be doing nothing, and these will still come through.

Now, why the HELL do ISPs allow these packets on the wire, as they are a LAN service only, is beyond me (no, it is not - I understand all too well the stupidity and laziness of most ISPs).

Re:No, it does not

[Pompatus]

Now, why the HELL do ISPs allow these packets on the wire, as they are a LAN service only, is beyond me

Not that I totally disagree with you in this instance, but one could also say, "why the HELL do users allow these packets from the internet, as they are a LAN service only, is beyond me". I'd rather have the freedom to decide what I can do with my connection than have someone else "secure" it for me.

Re:No, it does not

[stratjakt]

We use them over the 'net all the time, we just have our firewall allow only from trusted sites.

The NET family of commands are more useful than just popup messages.

It's not up to the ISP to block ANYTHING. What's inside those TCP or UDP packets is none of their fucking business.

Re:No, it does not

[spacecowboy420]

I've gotta tell you, I guess I prefer lazy ISPs. They are there to provide internet service, not firewall service - that would be my job. If you are getting these ads, you obviously aren't running a firewall on your windows box. If that is the case, I consider it a "dumbass tax" - where as, you being the dumbass, get taxed in annoyance.

Cox cable blocks access to smtp ports, you suggest blocking more packets - its just a beginning of the "Great Firewall of the US".
Not A Good Idea(tm)

Sorry if I sound paranoid, I just tend to look at the slippery slope side of things.

Re:No, it does not

[bryhhh]

Not that I totally disagree with you in this instance, but one could also say, "why the HELL do users allow these packets from the internet, as they are a LAN service only, is beyond me". I'd rather have the freedom to decide what I can do with my connection than have someone else "secure" it for me.

As a /. user that a fair comment, but what about the other 99.9% of internet users who don't read /.? They don't have the faintest idea that their Netbios/RPC ports are wide open, but wouldn't it be better for us 0.1% of people if ISP's did block such traffic for everybody?

If all ISP's blocked RPC & Netbios (to name a few), what effect would this have on you?

None or very little

Now think of the advantages that this could have for the other 99.9% of internet users?

Oooh, blaster and welchia would have gone unnoticed.

Now think of the advantages that blocking ports of the 99.9% of the internet users would have on us 0.1% of internet users?

Well they wouldn't have worms on their systems flooding our networks masses of ICMP traffic

Do you still think it's a bad idea for ISP's to be blocking traffic on ports that are deemed as LAN services?

2 billion.. hmmm

[nyet]

"On its Web site, the firm said the software could beam 135,000 pop-up ads at consumers every hour, and claimed to have a database of over two billion Internet addresses, according to the FTC."

2^32, minus subnets and netmasks, minus 10, 127, 192.168, etc...

Okay...

[Saint Aardvark]

"But the firm now says Windows Messenger probably isn't necessary for home users, and future versions of its Windows software will come with the service turned off."

I gotta know. Who ported cluestick to Windows? :-)

Re:It's a temporary restraining order....

[ERJ]

Not Redmond disciples...all software developers.

No offense, but I don't want to be partially responsible when someone abuses something I have written. Sure, you will say, "write better software" but the thing is, even perfectly written software, when used for something it was not designed for, can have bad effects. Should we blaim the person who wrote ping if it is used in some sort of denial of service attack?

Re:Mozilla does the same thing

[(H)elix1]

Uh, no it's not Howard. I use Mozilla with pop-up supression as do thousands of others. $30? Try free

Not sure about XP, but if you do a default Win2K install, the 'messenger' service is set to Automatic - meaning it is up and running when you start your computer. What is key here is this is essentially a windows application, not anything to do with the far too frequent HTML popups everyone is use to.

On Win2K, go to Administrative Tools > Services, find the messenger service with the description "Sends and receives messages transmitted by administrators or by the Alerter service.", stop it, and disable it so you don't have to deal with the (messenger based) pop ups again.

How long before linux is affected?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has come to my attention that there is a is a program called "kdialog" on most distros (since KDE is the dominant gui), since there are a lot of incecure boxen out there, how long will it take before some one writes a program to exploit this.

If you think I'm lying, press ALT+F2, then paste the following into it.

kdialog --msgbox "Your computer is broadcasting a IP Address, please go to purplemonkeyse.cx to download a security fix for only \$129"

To see if you computer is vulnerable, press ALT+PRINT SCREEN+B at the same time.

Not until it bothers me...

[zbowling]

I posted this on an ASK Slashdot a while back.
::History::

Its funny how the goverment doesn't seem to care until they get experience it for them selves? That fast against the messanger pop up stuff.

Wooooo..

How long will it take until they can't stand spam in their email and they decided to finally decide to take care of it. How about all of us legimate email users get together and spam the FCC and maybe we can piss them off anough to do something about it.

What took so long?

[thedillybar]

This is ridiculous. I understand why it's difficult to block spam: the sender makes an effort to be anonymous and unknown. They aren't recognized as legitimate companies and many of them are overseas and not subject to many laws.

Read the title. "FTC Shuts Down Pop-Up Extortion Firm" This is a firm in the United States with one heck of a business model. If what they're doing isn't illegal, it needs to be. The idea that a company could do this for so long and scam so many people certainly doesn't prove the effectiveness of our system to me. Something needs to change.

I hope we all do some research and think twice the next time we hit the polls. Matters like these are the responsibility of many various lawmakers. Let's hope they can earn all those figures and get some work done at the same time. Sure it's difficult, but suck it up for once.

I wrote this really amusing application a time ago

[Eudial]

I wrote this really amusing application a time ago, it listened to the ports used for MS win msg, and if it received a valid message, it replied once every 5 seconds, 600 times with the same message + the text "\nQuit spamming ffs!". Quite efficient.

Why? Well, my son is a student at a computer college, and he was sickin tired of people thinking that broadcasting MS windows messenger popus was fun, so he asked me for a tool to repent the spammers.

M$ has changed their tune

[El]

Last time I checked, I seem to recall they said "You really shouldn't disable Windows Messenger; buy a firewall instead." (Followed by instructions on how to disable.) Now they seem to be admitting it wasn't necessary in the first place here

Microsoft gets no blame

[t_allardyce]

An entire business set up on the basis that Microsoft leaves this stupid thing turned on. They get caught, (and yes the burgler is still responsible even if the door is left open) and Microsoft gets absolutely nothing, no "you should be more careful leaving un-needed services like that on by default it just encourages them" no bad press coverage about how all these things (pop up windows, pop-up messages, VB viri) could have been prevented if microsoft had changed 1 line of code.

My Favorite part...

[ePhil_One]

On its Web site, the firm said the software could beam 135,000 pop-up ads at consumers every hour, and claimed to have a database of over two billion Internet addresses, according to the FTC

If any wants, I can sell them a copy of that database for just $25,000. A brief sample to show I have the goods:

192.168.0.1
192.168.0.2
192.168.0.3
192.168.0.4

Re:My Favorite part...

[(H)elix1]

If any wants, I can sell them a copy of that database for just $25,000. A brief sample to show I have the goods:

192.168.0.1
192.168.0.2
192.168.0.3
192.168.0 .4

{Dark Helmet voice}
192.168.0.1-2-3-4-5 -- what a coincidence, I have that combination on my network.
{/Dark Helmet voice}

Check out the domains Square D registered

[John3]

The complete list is here, but the ones that jumped out are:

blockmessenger.com

defeatpopupspam.com

easypopupblocker.com

endads.com

fightpopups.com

I guess it's like the big corporate guys trying to buy up all the yourcorporatenameheresucks.com domains. On the other hand, maybe selling pop-up blockers to defeat their own spam tool was their way of making money from both sides of the equation>

Sell pop-up spam tools to the marketing firms, and sell blockers to the consumers.

Re:I wrote this really amusing application a time

[gregmac]

I wrote this really amusing application a time ago, it listened to the ports used for MS win msg, and if it received a valid message, it replied once every 5 seconds, 600 times with the same message + the text "\nQuit spamming ffs!". Quite efficient.

I actually wrote something similar, but not quite as annoying, for IRC quite a while ago. Every time someone would spam (channel-wide notice, or one of those obviously infected-with-a-trojan messsages), it would send that IP a net msg saying "Your computer is infected with a virus, please download an anti-virus tool and fix it"..

I don't really know if it was effective or not, and likely a lot of people couldn't recieve it anyways (behind firewall, going offline before it could complete, etc), but at the least, it would annoy them a little bit and hopefully make them look into it, at least.

Well, I have a list with over 4.2 Billion!

[ahecht]

Some claim to have a list with 4,228,250,625 IP addresses, but 16,581,375 of those seem to all refer to the same computer. I, however, have a verified list of 4,211,669,251.

Re:The lesson is...

[mark-t]

In all fairness, presumably the messenger service exists in the first place because it was supposed to be useful. The fact that you should have to disable what is _supposed_ to be a useful service on a system in order to keep out people who have no business messenging your PC in the first place is sort of counter-intuitive, don't you think?

Never seen one of these

[Zed2K]

Oh wait, I know why I've never seen one. I bothered to take the few minutes and spend the money to secure my pc's and network before attaching to my cable modem.

What do you want people that make toilets to handhold you also when you go take a piss? Might hit the floor and make a slick spot then go after the plumber or something.

Its called accepting responsibility, in this case for your network.

Microsoft's interesting response

[murdocj]

To me the most interesting part is Microsoft's response:

A Microsoft spokesman said future versions of Windows would ship with Messenger turned off but said the company should not be faulted for enabling Windows Messenger.

"At the time we released Windows XP (news - web sites), it wasn't an issue that was being abused," Microsoft spokesman Sean Sundwall said.

In other words, despite all the hype about security and code reviews, Microsoft just doesn't view exploitable *features* as holes until the exploit actually occurs. The idea of trying to make the systems they release secure from the start still hasn't taken hold.

There is a big difference...

[MadAnthony02]

Checks are not percieved to be worth anything if there isn't money behind them. People know that and take steps to make sure that they are legit (requiring ID, not sending an item until the check has cleared, using check verification services). With money, people generally assume it's valid... and our entire economic system would collapse if too much counterfitting existed.

Re:Did Microsoft ever give a good reason...

[Myxorg]

If it's running as a service, it can't display a message box.

Windows: Google toolbar

[lostindenver]

I use the Google tool bar and it stop 99% of all pop ups. It also is site by site configurable so I can have usefull pop ups on some sites

Security

[neuroscr]

So one of the FTC's commissioners is browsing the internet on an firewalled connection on some type of windows box. Interesting, sounds very secure. No doubt he works on that box regularly probably with important information.

Re:Actually it's a windows thing

[GigsVT]

Admitting to using not only Windows, but also AOL on Slashdot. Using them at home even. Ouch.

You know, you could have turned off the messenger service in the services control panel, even if AOL hadn't already.