Is it just me or did someone sabotage freestuff to load a bunch of crap? 1) Anyone know how to get rid of the stuff it loaded into IE? 2) Shouldn't the freestuff review catch this before it goes online?

What do you mean? Did you download something that put stuff on your Internet Explorer?

Something weird happened to me about an hour ago, I browse with Mozilla but my IE started popping open. I didn't notice any extra toolbars on it tho..what sort of stuff got loaded onto yours?

Oh I havent been to freestuff for a couple of days, was in the merchant forum when IE started popping up.

Went into freestuff. Windows started popping up all over the place. Now they keep doing it. I found a few buggers in the "add/remove programs" and axed those ... I probably need to run ad-aware too.

I'm not seeing anything. I do have a pop-up blocker on, but I'd see a sign that it was actively blocking pop-ups if there was anything going on. I tried Netscape and IE and can't find anything. I'm sure another Mod will wander by and test it as well. Hopefully it's a matter of something getting onto your computer from a different site and waiting a bit before spamming you with pop-ups. I've seen that happen before. Spybot and AdAware should take care of the problem. Cheers!

There are a couple of site links, sorry can't remember exactly which ones, that lead to a site that persistantly tried loading Gator on my. Spybot blocked it but it sure was persistant! One site that was offering Bryce materials I gave up on and End Tasked on IE just to get out of there....

your browser has probably been hijacked.gator and xupiter are probably the hardest to get rid of once they are on your system.do a file search for these 2.if you find them on your system do a search on google for these 3 free programs,"hijackthis","ad-aware",and "spybot".if you dl them make sure you dl the updates also.there are a few good forums re:getting rid of browser hijackers.

Attached Link: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

Thanks for the info! It's much appreciated!

never had problem with this :) i removed IE from my windows, and never use it anyway... :) now i understand even better why i decided to do this (too deeply rooted in system, in places it shoudlnt.. so such behavior appears)

hmmm .... There's not a huge amount we can do about such sites ... if we prohibited them, many people who cannot afford webspace would not be able to offer freebies. Mostly its the free webservers that are the culprit. Also, I use Netscape 4.2, so they don't affect me when checking sites. (obsolete browser ..works nicely as a popup blocker)

I didn't think you could remove IE is this something new I've missed?

Removing IE is easy but you may need to make minor adjustments to other apps that depend or call upon it. WARNING! If you have never messed with your Registery before then proceed at your Own RISK!! You may seriously mess things up or even loose your ability to get back into Windozs!! 1) Click START->RUN and type 'Regedit' -> OK 2) IMPORTANT! FIRST BACK IT UP: FILE->EXPORT 3) Delete at least two Keys: a) HKey_Local_MachineSoftwareMicrosoft....(any thing saying Internet Explorer or IE ***NOT 'Explorer'!! b) HKey_Current_UserSoftwareMicrosoft....(any thing saying Internet Explorer or IE ***NOT 'Explorer'!! 4) Close Regeditor and open Explorer, find and delete the folder: C:Program FilesInternet Explorer 5) Reboot And it's gone! WARNING! If you have never messed with your Registery before then proceed at your Own RISK!! You may seriously mess things up or even loose your ability to get back into Windozs!!

another free little proggy is "IEradicator" completely removes internet explorer, just search google.

I'd wondered where that came from. Until now, I figured (as most people who fall victim to it do) that I was the only one. Thanks for the info. I actually found it, as a virus, by accident on my weekly virus scan then investigated further. It had said that a ddm, or something like that, folder was in my program files on my c: drive. Lil buggers. ;) Stormy

Attached Link: http://www.accs-net.com/hosts/get_hosts.html

igohigh: nice explanation for people who want to start with... it is difficult to explain such things as registries in simple steps... for spywares, there is also addaware that is a nice thing, but some softwares will REFUSE to work if their associated spywares aren't in function. Then you still can block outcoming spywares with a firewall :) anyway what you said only prevent windows from using Ie as a default browser, isn't it ? I mean, sadly, IE still loads in memory at start of the computer, IE still take some 40mb space on your hard drive too, and many of its dll(such as the lousy pseudohtml help system) are still rooted into the system, so does the control panel applet (the source where most gator or spyware like to pollute..) I was talking about REMOVING :) (some ready to use software like 98lite free version does this like a charm). However it comes with a price: some other softwares, without any internet relevancy, will refuse to install, such as mediaplayer codecs (the installere needs ie, i dont know why, really.. but you still can install them manually), or 3dsmax 5 and paintshop pro 8. For me, the fact a 3d software or a paint software badly needs/requires some internet browser to be present (well not some, juste ONE, the worst in ater of stability and security) is totally puzzling to me. So far i do not use 3dsmax or psp8, so it is not very annoying. i think nothing without a price: either get annoyed by spywares, activeX scripts, some lousy trojans, and start popup and the like, not to mention other stability and memory issues, but being able to "do like everyone", and also install some high end programs, or be totally quiet about all those problems. I know it is a difficult choice for many... but it is another story and i think it goes outside the boundaries of Poser forum i think people may learn to be more exigeant and morethoughtful about themselves in the long term, instead of lazyly accept poisonned presents that tickle their self confort string but in fact have so many bad side effects... and for other people, remember: there is not very often now so called 'virus' in the strict meaning of the term according to virus programming gold age. Most of "annoying" softwares nowadays can be seen in startup registry keys, or by msconfig.exe, of by a task monitor, so in fact they are not VIRUSES, yet sure they are a real mess for unexperimented people. Hopefully, most of the time these 3-clicks vbscript generated pesky codes are easy to spot and remove when you know where to look...

Im not sure... but I think when you remove IE a little red light goes on in Bill Gates bathroom [yes Bill, I know anout the red light] hehe ;) spybot - search and destroy is just awesome, I run it regularly :) I wasnt aware of hijackthis - so thanks so much for posting about it!

Maybe a coincidence, but it's now being reported that a BANNER AD (!) was infected with Qhosts trojan at FortuneCity last week. It was removed as soon as it was discovered, but that was at least a few hours later. It symptoms matched those referenced in this thread. The exploit was for that M$ security hole of August (MS03-032), patched again in Sept (same #), and that was still open until the lastest patch this week in Oct MS03-040 (828750). So if you haven't updated in last week, time to do it again... Qhosts infection is the only known exploit of the 3rd iteration of M$'s bug, and the websites used by it have all been taken down. So it's no longer a threat, but how long before a copy-cat or variant breaks loose... And yet another reason to run an ad-blocker.

well to protect yourself from nasty things feeding themselves on lousy M$ products patched and updated twice a week, the best way is to not use them at all to begin with :) ever heard about something reliable and trustworthy known as "open source" projects ?