now the spam is pissing me off

Until now I have suffered with much patience the daily onslaught of ads, both decent and naughty, in my hotmail inbox. After all, what can I expect from a free service? But my kindhearted forbearance is no longer enough for the spammers. In their perseverance to ensure, among other things, that I have a healthy supply of viagra to complement my newly enhanced manhood, they have begun employing a downright underhanded tactic to get my money. These unscrupulous jerks have figured out I have a cable modem, and from time to time (three an hour?) send me a wholly unsolicited textad that "pops" up on my computer. No matter what I have running, the ad appears and must be clicked on to disappear. I usually ignore the subject of the ads, but one caught my attention this morning, as it popped up probably ten times. These guys sell software that purports to kill the popups, but can you guess how they advertise? With popups! Lots of them! This reminds me of the Far Side cartoon where a guy is reading a note tied to a rock that has just been thrown through his front window: "For window repair, call Al's Glass." Surely this cannot be legal. Do others have this problem, even on computers without cable connections?