[Mike McCarty]

I have AOL as my Internet Service Provider, my operating system is Windows XP, I am a Scorpio, my home state is Texas and my favorite fruit is the avocado.

Like a lot of people I get slammed by pop up ads every day. A couple of weeks ago I was rooting around and discovered something. From Windows bottom left you see the "Start" icon with the multicolored window, I clicked on this and then the "all programs" button. I began to see a lot of things that I had never knowingly used and never remember installing. They were, I believe, programs that were either pre-installed (maybe, but I doubt it) or had been placed into my machine by the pop up spammers while I was on-line (could this be?).

I deleted five or seven of these things, you'll know them when you see them. One actually said "by de-installing this you will be putting people out of work." For the last two weeks I have been conspicuously free of these pop up ads! Also, my computer boots up about three times faster!