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Shoot The Messenger allows any Windows NT/2000/XP user to easily stop and disable the unnecessary Messenger Service running in their machines.

The Windows "Messenger Service" is being exploited to spray the Internet with unsolicited commercial eMail. The receipt of a single UDP packet can cause a "Messenger Service" dialog to pop-up on the user's screen. It is possible for the sender to "spoof" (falsify) the packet's "Source IP", making these packets impossible to trace back to their origin. If our experience with eMail Spam is any model, we can expect to see a lot more of this in the future.

The recent major upgrade to our ShieldsUP! services has incorporated the ability to have us send your machine a few simple and harmless "Messenger Spam" pop-up notes. You can use this facility to see these Messenger Service pop-ups for yourself if you don't usually, because your system is behind a personal firewall or NAT router. And to verify that they are no longer received once you have successfully disabled Windows' built-in Messenger Service. Please see the "Messenger Spam" section of our ShieldsUP! Services to perform these tests.