[thelist] Hijacked start page

[Simon Willison]

john at johnallsopp.co.uk wrote:
> A friend told me his startup page (IE, W98) has been changed, and changing
> it back doesn't fix the problem.
> 
> He thinks it might have been a car site that changed it, and the site is
> now some portal.
> 
> What's the first step in fixing/diagnosing this?

The spyware/malware filters mentioned by others are a great starting 
place. You might also consider suggesting he switch to using a more 
secure (or at least less commonly exploited) browser for his day to day 
surfing, such as Mozilla Firebird. If he ever runs across a site that 
only works in IE (sadly they still exist) he can always fire up IE just 
to view that one site. In practise, I haven't had to use IE to view any 
public web sites in a long time.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/