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General discussion

IE desktop icon

Jan 21, 2010 10:40PM PST

The IE icon on my desktop (Sony Vaio, Vista 32-bit Home Premium) has renamed itsef as 'hh', i.e. this is the subtext that now appears under the icon. The link still works perfecly normally and opens IE at my Google homepage. In my 'Start' menu the name still appears as 'Internet Explore'. Everything seems ok, I don't see anything that looks sinister. (I was renaming some photos yesterday, but did not use hh as a file name).
Should I just rename the icon? Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Have you checked
Jan 22, 2010 12:51AM PST

Have you checked for anything "sinister"? I mean, using Internet Explorer is like walking around in a pitch black room full of trigger happy gun nuts wearing a glowing neon bulls eye target on your chest and back.

Just like you'd expect to be shot multiple times in the above example, you should be expecting something "sinister" to happen to your system when using Internet Explorer. Why people continue to use IE is beyond me. Forget all the usual arguments, IE is the ONLY browser with a malware problem. That alone seems like a compelling enough reason to find something (anything) else.

But until you've actively checked for some kind of "sinister" activity on your system, I'd assume that Internet Explorer has been compromised. Actually that's how you should be treating it all the time, but especially when something odd has happened seemingly out of nowhere.

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icon
Jan 22, 2010 4:27AM PST

When you go into the icon properties and rename it to Internet Explorer, does it stay with that name or is it changed again. If it changes you probably have a bug on your hands and I recommend doing a full system scan with your AV.

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IE icon
Jan 22, 2010 5:28AM PST

When I rename it as Internet Explorer it stays that way, which at least is a good sign.
I have run a scan with my AV programme and nothing was found. I am using IE8 so I think any vulnerability is (relatively!) limited.
(I used to use Firefox but stopped when they allowed third party cookies. However I think it can now be configured to block them).
I think also it is perhaps unlikely that if my computer had been compromised the perpetrator would leave such visible evidence, but one never knows I guess.

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gopod
Jan 22, 2010 7:33AM PST

Sounds like the issue is solved. If you look around these forums you will see a program called Malwarebytes discussed frequently. That might not be a bad program to run on occasion too.

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They never stopped that
Jan 22, 2010 8:17AM PST

They never stopped that with Firefox, so you must've read some bad info somewhere. You can set up domain level rules for cookies, which goes above and beyond what IE offers. And if that's not enough for you, there are several extensions that offer greater control. CS Lite and Cookie Monster are two that come to mind.

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IE icon
Jan 23, 2010 4:26AM PST

Thanks a lot for the information, I'll follow it up.