Every time this mornign (from a couple of different computers and IPs, I have tried to go onto the Front Page to read the latest from Cecil.
Insteado f getting the main page, I get a little box asking me to download a file called “straightdope” (no extension I can see). I didn’t of course.
Is the front page hacked or is it just me???
Loads fine for me.
Some spyware has malicious downloads triggered by navigating to an innocent page. Some of them are triggered by the Straightdope page. Do the usual Adaware & Spybot stuff, and see if that sorts it. (There was another thread about this a few weeks ago.)
Seems to be working fine now for me. Weird.
as to the spyware, I am at work (surfing on someone else’s dime 
) and our firewall / protection is pretty decent, so I doubt it is spyware, though you just never know.
What browser are/were you using?
I’ve seen Firefox occasionally do this, but it eventually sorts itself out. It seems to get it into its head (do browsers have heads?) that you want to download a particular webpage to a file rather than view it.
I’ve seen this same problem a few times. I am pretty vigilant about spyware, so I don’t think that was causing the problem. Last time I saw it was about 2 weeks ago, for a good part of the day, and then a couple weeks before that.
I did not download whatever it wanted me to download, and didn’t really persue it… I just googled a link straight to the message board.
I’m using IE6, XP home if that helps any.
This happened to me a few months ago - it had something to do with the particular banner ad at the top of the screen, and clearing my cache made it go away.