Pop up

[Cathy]

I've got a pop up called 'search the web' that comes up after a few minutes of opening Internet Explorer (whether or not I'm actually on line). I can't see any way to close it down apart from using the Task Manager, meaning that I also lose the page I'm looking at. I guess this is something that's actually on my hard drive somewhere, but how do I find it and get rid of it?

[Headtime]

Sounds like it could be bit of spyware.

Head on over to http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware and download the excellent ad-aware.

That should get rid of many nasties hiding on your hard drive. Ad-Aware removed 113 seperate spyware files on my system when I first used it. I was completely oblivious to their presence!

[answerbok]

..and Don't trust Micrasoft, MSN, Hotmail or their netpassport or their messenger. because they all link up with Alexa, which is an info collector, and bear in mind that AB itself has about 7 spy agents; adviva, blue streak, atdmt, doubleclick, valueclick, hitbox, fastclick, and that Apache thing. so it's going to hell in a handbag, hold on, techies and hackers will catch up soon, fingers crossed. :-)

[answerbok]

this site; http://www.pestpatrol.com/pestinfo/alpha_index.asp list and explains about 200 nasties to avoid including alexa, Microsoft's starter for ten.

[Cathy]

Thanks for that. I downloaded ad aware and 233 dodgy files turned up. I still can't believe there were that many!