XP security leak?

[Specialist]

http://www.imgmag.org/images/specialist/wMsg.JPG
Forced formatting removed. ~Dalton

I was just browsing this site and this message pops up. I know my mother has been logging into her bank account a few days ago but I usually use tracks eraser to clean cache files. So the real question is how serious is this? Could it be just a small problem advertisers are taking advantage of?

[phongn]

It's the built-in messenger service, usually used for LANs. I usually firewall off the relevant ports (or you can shut down that service entirely, but I like having print queue messages).

[Dalton]

http://www.imgmag.org/images/specialist/wMsg.JPG

I was just browsing this site and this message pops up. I know my mother has been logging into her bank account a few days ago but I usually use tracks eraser to clean cache files. So the real question is how serious is this? Could it be just a small problem advertisers are taking advantage of?

You can relax, it's simply SPAM. Spammers are taking advantage of a utility built into Windows XP that sends messages to computers over a network (i.e. "Your document has printed") and spammers have found this useful since its default state is always enabled. You can turn it off if you want.

[The Black Jesus]

i'd recommend going to your computer management console and shutting down the relevant service

(i really need to move to linux soon)

[Vertigo1]

To turn this off, go into your admin panel and double-click on services. Scroll down to the listing called "Messenger". Right-click on it and select properties. Set it to disabled and click the stop button to kill the service. Then hit OK.

Thats it.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Here's a www.SpywareInfo.com forum thread that discusses this topic: http://www.spywareinfo.com/yabbse/index ... eadid=1920

Anyone that got to SpywareInfo from SD post here http://www.spywareinfo.com/yabbse/index ... 0#lastPost