New Type Of Spam...

If you disable the messenger service, you can no longer recieve or send messages.

You might be able to put the service on "manual" and it will start up when the net send command is run, but then it will stay on and you will recieve those messages unless you disable the service again.

If you need to send messages using the messenger service regularly, it could be possible to stop/restart the messenger service using a batch file. Open notepad and type net stop messenger, then save it as anything.bat

When executed, it will stop the messneger service. Likewise, you can use the command net start messenger to restart the service.

Ideally, you could have two seperate batch files and put them on your desktop (or where ever convienient) and execute them when needed... One to start messenger, and one to stop.

From Messenger service description:

Messenger

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.

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You can still use Windows or MSN Messenger. The messenger service is about sending administrative alerts like shutdowns, low disk space, crashes and so on to different computers on a network.

It is needed for net send too, I understand that this is something like winpopup used to be in Win98 - you can send a message to another computer that appears in a popup dialog.

For most people these features are useless (and now annoying too) - you can happily disable the service.

Why not plug yourself into the router that is sitting on your desk? It will be nearly impossible for them to send you a message through your firewall unless you route the port they netsend onto your computer, which would be dumb.

yes i've seen this at work on the servers.

if you are getting a lot, and have a fixed IP address, you have probably made your way onto a list somewhere and you should have steps to have your IP address changed, if you have the need for the messanger service that is...

Does this message get recorded in event logs? Maybe you can just block the sender's IP?

messenger spam

There is a article regarding this in Microsoft knowledge base.

Hopefully this helps.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330904

Originally posted by Nodsu
Does this message get recorded in event logs? Maybe you can just block the sender's IP?

Click to expand...

I don't think you can do that because it doesn't look for where it comes from. I read something about this that said it is almost impossible to block them, your best bet is to disable the service.

Oh man, I just actually read this:



"This is the only real evil left...." - Interview with the Vampire.

I can't believe the audacity(?) of these s**ts...

This really bugs me

There should be a law against things like this...

One day I think there will be a law against this. Certainly in the UK, mobile phone text message spamming is already being looked into, as many youngsters are being tricked into running up very high phone bills.

I am just glad I turned off Messenger service, because I used to get these things all the time. Got quite annoying, but now I haven't gotten one in a long time.

And just like everything else, once this gets outlawed, or illegal, there will be something else that is even worse.

Remember that if you are receiving messages in such a fashion, that NetBIOS over your external net connection is enabled, which can be very risky. Although it doesn't leave your machine any more open to a DoS attack, it's easily possible to obtain your machines name, your domain or workgroup, view what shares you have enabled, and possibly even use services on and use open shares on your machine. Which is bad.