You probably know what I’m talking about. While you’re surfing, some unwanted popup will appear, resizing your window, adding 6-7 URLs to your bookmarks and entering some stupid website you don’t want to open as your starting page.
I’m using IE6 with maximum security (no active-x, no autimatic downloads etc…). I even tried making the Favourites folder write protected, but that didn’t help.
How do I prevent URLs from adding bookmarks to my Favourites?
How do I prevent popups from resizing my browser window?
How do I prevent URLs from setting new default start pages?
Oh, and please don’t start raving about how I should get some other browser and ranting about IE. If possible, I would prefer solutions to at least some of these problems and continue using IE.
That uh… shouldn’t be happening. With all updates installed, and with the settings you mention, IE should be as secure as, say, Mozilla
Make sure you do have all updates installed… IE has a bunch of holes in it, and Windows itself (I’m assuming XP) has had a bunch of RPC problems recently that could cause such behaviour if you’re not using a firewall.
There’s also a bunch of spyware that launch popup windows willy-nilly - you should make sure you don’t have any of them.
#1 and #3: Are you sure they are coming from websites and not software you installed? In order for a page to add something to your favorites folder and/or make itself the start page, it usually has to bring up a dialog box asking whether you want to do it…
Are there any specific websites that keep ending up in your favorites list, or do random ones show up there?
Or, if you’re sick of resized windows in general, you can use something like NetCaptor, which is basically an IE addon that makes windows appear as “tabs” instead of seperate windows. See their website for a better explanation. Just so you know, it IS still Internet Explorer, not a completely different browser like Netscape.
Thank you. The Google Toolbar is indeed neat (though it doesn’t block those kinds of popups that appear when you close a window, but anyway).
NetCaptor sounds nice, but it’s not freeware, and I never purchase stuff online.
#1 and #3: Yes, it is caused 100% by an URL, though it’s always the same links: “free mp3’s”, “Yahoo Geocities” and some adult ones. I do have SpyBot and Ad-aware and I use them routinely BTW.
About the winodws resize stuff: there must be some way to lock it somewhere. Does anyone know where the information of the window size is stored? In the registry perhaps?
OK, found some answers myself:
Re protecting your default start page: SpyBot has such an option!
Re unwanted bookmarks: I updated SpyBot, and the problem is gone now. I have to apologise to sailor. It seems he was right.
Well, disregard that last post. That SpyBot option only protects you from manual tampering, i.e. it prevents you from changing your settings back to the original state after they have been screwed by hostile URLs.
So the original questions remain partly unanswered…
No file sharing utilities, and besides, SpyBot and Ad-aware are now fully updated and still aren’t finding anything that might cause it.
Anyway, here’s an additional question: how can I prevent my browser from opening a specific URL that I tell it not to access?
I mean, if I wanted my browser to never open anything from StraitDope.com, how would I do that?
Here’s how I prevent a lot of unwanted stuff in IE6 (this will help if pages try to install stuff without your knowledge):
Open browser
Go to ‘tools’
Go to ‘Internet options’
Hit the ‘advanced’ tab
Scroll down to ‘enable install on demand’
Uncheck both boxes. Hit ‘apply’ and OK.
This is checked by default and enables webpages to install anything they want. Once it is unchecked and a page wants to install something, you will get a pop-up notification and the option to refuse the download.
There may be an easier way that only effects IE, but you could create a hosts file that points “straitdope.com” to the localhost IP address (127.0.0.1). Then anything that tried to access “straitdope.com” would end up going to your own computer.
