Believe it or not I am actually in tech support so I can probably help. If the box popping up is msn messenger then you can disable that by going to "start" "run" "msconfig". Then go to the start up tab & look for msnmsgr & uncheck it. That will stop msn messenger from automatically starting up when first booting up your computer.
On the other hand if you get this when opening up msn the browser then this is part of that program & you can't stop it.
If this is an advertisement then that is pretty much a fact of life. We all get pop ups & that won't change by changing your ISP & has nothing to do with Verizon as said previously.
Hope this kinda helps. :)
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That is 100% correct. The type of pop-ups you are talking about have to do with the Windows messenger service.. a built in thingy that tech people can use to send to other computers on their networks.. try it yourself.. go to start>run>then type in net send <an ip adddress> "a message" if you do something like net send localhost Hi! a pop up window should appear on your screen saying Hi!
Spammers figured out how to do this and now send ads that way. Disabling the messenger service will stop them from being able to do it.
As for normal pop up windows just go get the Google Toolbar 2.0. It comes with a pop up blocker that works very very well. It even keeps track for you of how many it has blocked. My work PC here is up to 163 blocked in the past few weeks.
As for the random IMs you said you were getting check to see if you have yourself listed in the AOL directory.. its the second or so tab in the Profile settings of AIM. Turn all that stuff off to stop from getting it.
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