There was a recent study by a security organization (not even a single company, but a securities group). The study found that the average life of a system connected to broadband without any protection was about 15 20 minutes, less time then it took to get the updates and start protecting yourself. While you use ZoneAlarm, you may want to look into a inexpensive hardware firewall as well. While there are a number of brands, Linksys has done pretty well by me. This also will give you the ability to share your new broadband connection with multiple systems within your house (once you wire the other locations). It will help trap out some of these types of things Also if youre running Windows XP or 2000 (or higher), go into the Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services. Look for Microsoft Messenger. Not the MSN Messenger, this one is for Network servers to broadcast to your system its typically set to Automatic, double click on it and set it to Disabled. This should keep some of these pop-ups from getting through. Then you need to get something like Ad-aware or Spybot Search and Destroy to clean out whats already made it past everything else. Good luck and happy surfing (once you get this cleaned up)

The doctor says I have way too much blood in my caffeine system.