[rab] I am touched, although I would have thought that was obvious already.

[rab] on the front page there are two buttons - "list" and "de-list" which will allow you to vote, and let you view the results. Sell Anouska soon...

Having just changed my ISP (to BT) and upgraded my PC to XP - I am occasionally getting advertising messages popping up when I'm online. Typically they are a box with a message like "You have won £1,000 ring...", "I'm looking for love in your area" or "Earn from home...". I think someone has somehow got my PC id number because it is always displayed at the top of the message. As I need the internet to do my job, this is intensely irritating. Do any of you know how I can stop these messages?

BtD]If you run IE like me there's not much hope, but those that run the browser Opera are able to refuse pop ups.

Are these REALLY browser popups from your own browser? There are some spywareish creatures that can cause these. A personal firewall can shut them up.

If they are browser popups, then there is always ad-aware to stop spawning advertising windows and spyware. Simply inhibiting all popups can be inconvenient.

Inkspot/gil] Thanks. I think that they must be spyware dodahs because they quote my PC ID and sometimes appear when OE is running and IE is off. Can you recommend good (inexpensive) personal firewall software?

ZoneAlarm seems to work ok. They have a free version. Hopefully, here is their site and here is the link to a free version. If you choose it they nag you a bit to upgrade. If you look around the rest of download.com you might get a few more ideas.