This week's tip has two purposes. It both improves the security of your computer and serves to eliminate yet another opening from which you can be spammed! It's worth the effort. It seems that Microsoft has built a feature into Windows which serves no useful purpose for you, but creates a vulnerability on your system. It's called Windows Messenger, and it has nothing to do with anything you use, such as Microsoft security update notification service or any of the "instant messenging" programs which are available.
Having identified this as a problem, a company called Gibson Research has decided to fix the problem and, best of all, to do it for no charge. They actually offer several free services. This particular one is a download of a program they wrote called "Shoot the Messenger". The program requires no special knowledge of Windows to operate and can be downloaded and run in a minute or two, even using a dialup connection. The following link will take you directly to their "Shoot the Messenger" web page.
Here's how you do it -
You can read the Gibson Research web-page to get the full explanation of what this program does. Suffice it to say however, it works and it closes one more hole in the security on your computer!