Tedz - Thank you my friend. You know, I think we have a business opportunity here. Maybe a side branch to BrickShopping Inc (tm). It involves these nice, heavy rubber coated steel poles I have and tracking a few of these people down for a fee. I think we can make millions. What'aya say? :)

'chelle - See, that's my biggest problem, I simply refuse to let the #$(&#;$# win. I never have and I will never wipe my system because of it. It's one of my character flaws. :) Think I won another round, but only time will tell.

Onslow - I have 2 layers of protection to my e-mail. I don't think it came in that route.

B - Yea, I have a software firewall monitor running. Forget to mention that - ZoneAlarm Pro. What was sneaky is that it used IE completely against me. It started by forcing a bunch of sites into my TRUSTED SITES list and then reconfiguring IE to the lowest possible security settings on my trusted zones (there were 2 I know for sure should have been PROMPT ME settings that were set to ENABLE by it). With the security I had in place, it shouldn't have been able to do that. So now I have to find out where the chink in the armor is. I Don't think it was anything I installed. I rarely download anything I've gotten off the web. And when I do, it's usually from a size like ZDNet's Download site (a legit site).

Problem is, this may go back a long time. Could have easily been a sleeper that just triggered. Will just have to keep my eyes open.

What I love is, protecting against and fixing this kind of crap is part of what I get paid for in a mission critical production environment. If I have this much trouble stopping or getting rid of this stuff, what chance does the average computer user have?

-=>Donald

Message edited on: 02/08/2005 15:21