• Hijacked browser (5.5)

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    #366344

    Tutopia.com is a free internet access and mail service in some Latin American countries. They rely on advertising for their revenue. And they have learned how to “hijack” one’s home page, so that the browser always goes to their page (with connected ads) first before you can browse other places. This job is so thorough that my browser even in off-line mode insists on going to their home page stored on my system! In “Internet settings” I see my home page setting hasn’t changed to Tutopia.com. So how do they do this? How can I at least prevent my browser from going to their page first in off-line mode? Is it a regestry setting they change? Thanks! Russ

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    • #567988

      Search your computer for all files named hosts. IE will use these files to match domain names with IP addresses before checking the authoritative source out on the ‘net. Possibly the deed is done in there, although the IE security model should prevent this.

      Does this company’s software run in the background when you start Windows or IE? If so, it may well intercept and modify the browser’s behavior on the fly. This would take some additional research to track down.

      • #568527

        Thanks for the answer, I’ll look into that. Russ

      • #568563

        I have my home page as “blank”, because I don’t necessarily want to go to the same start page each time. From time to time (maybe 2-3 times per month) I get hijacked to this page: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.asp (I didn’t tag this intentionally).
        My home page isn’t changed and the next time I open IE it works as expected. This is my office PC and we are forbidden (on pain of death or something even worse) to download any applications, updates, patches etc.  This is handled by ‘those that know’ in our ITS department.
        I suppose it’s dumb to ask why MS would want me to hit on their page –  but why?  I suspect that there isn’t a thing I can do about it (excuse me Ma’m) but this can be very irritating at times (like when the boss wants something from the net yesterday!)
        Any advice will be appreciated and rewarded with a virtual

        • #568565

          This setting, maybe?

          • #568573

            YES exclamation

            Lets see that’s 3.3 x Bud cheers = 1 x British Bitter cheers

            YAMC (yet another metric conversion)

    • #567992

      Interesting site to read up on this:
      http://66.34.160.192/spywareinfo/hijacked.html

      • #568531

        Thanks for the answer, I will look into that. Russ

    • #568037

      Hi
      These bits of freeware from my site should help:

      Registry Protector : #70 – stops things making silent changes
      Start Page Guard : #91 – self-explanatory
      XTQ : #18 – sets or re-sets IE settings that may have been altered

      Click My Sig

      • #568530

        Thanks for the answer, I shall look into that. Russ

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