Windows Messenger Pop-up spam

[Matthew Romanek <shandower () gmail com>]

Hey all,

I've a question, asked purely for the sake of curiosity. 

I was just reminded of the bad old days working for an ISP where every
other call was about lewd messages popping up on a user's screen when
they weren't even doing anything. Windows messaging popups were THE
complaint at the time, and slowly we convinced people that personal
firewalls were a good idea (via messenger popups, no less. We were a
scummy little ISP, and no great bastion of morality).

It just occured to me that I (personally) haven't seen a popup in
several years. I assume it's because we've learned about security and
firewalling and all that. So my question is: Is this sort of stuff
still a problem? Does it still exist in the wild? I suppose I could
plug an unprotected windows machine into a public IP address, but I
think I'd be likely to be taken out by something worse before a
messenger ad comes along. And I'm not THAT curious. :)

-- 
Matthew 'Shandower' Romanek
IDS Analyst