Sandpoppe, the firewall will only detect Poser activity during start-up. You can safely set the firewall to any setting (even letting it block Poser access), Poser won't mind. It is not absolutely sure that the firewall will stopp these new Messenger ads. The best way to stop them is to disable the Messenger service in Windows totally. Do like this: - Right click on "My computer" and select "Manage" - Select "Services and application" and then "Services" - Find the service "Messenger" - Right click on it and select "Properties" - Set "Startup type" to "Disabled" This will turn off the Messenger service permanently. This is usually not a problem since only a fraction of the Windows user will ever use it. It is intended for system administrators to send messages to users over local networks and allows the message to be targeted to specific IP's. Spammers has recently found this well hidden and up until now forgotten Windows feature and is using it to send their weird offers randomly to entire IP-ranges.