[thelist] Weird IE6 Hijacking

[Simon Willison]

Andre Genic wrote:

> Seems as though someone has hijacked my IE6, for some reason when I visit a
> site that uses pop ups, a second one opens up and goes to this IP address
> 66.250.57.226 which goes back to a hosting company in NYC.
> 
> The site itself http://66.250.57.226 is like one of those spammy search
> engine pages called 8ad.com strange thing is they offer a link "Uninstall
> WinShow PopUps", how the hell did their WinShoW PopUps get on my machine in
> the first place, I don't download anything remotely dodgy or go on porn
> sites.

You might have inadvertantly clicked "yes" in one of IEs "would you like 
to install some spyware" dialog boxes, which pop up on even some sites 
you would think would be more reputable (I'm sure I saw one on 
ezboard.com once).

There's a very simple solution: stop using IE. It's old, flakey and 
insecure and is the least capable of the current generation of browsers. 
A far better alternative is Mozilla Firebird, which you can download 
either as a zip file or as a self extracting .exe:

Zip file version:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firebird/releases/0.6.1/MozillaFirebird-0.6.1-win32.zip

Installer version:
http://downloads.mozdev.org/seb/MozillaFirebird-0.6.1-setup.exe

Thankfully, with the exception of a diminishing number of brain-dead 
sites that absolutely refuse to work in anything other than Explorer, 
there's precious little reason to continue using IE in this day and age.

Cheers,

Simon Willison