Further seeking has revealed:
Expiry date of Dat Miner cookie 2009 (5 years)
Reboot after cleanout showed "please wait while reconfiguring files". Apparently this went in and unchecked AVG CC and Taskmon (scheduled tasks) from Config> Start up... explaining their disappearance from bar.
Still don't know why clock disappeared possibly connected to Task Shed?
I appreciate all your replies and have considered.
Reasoning: Immediately before closing for the night Fri, ran AVG, Adaware & Spybot scans because of so many new definitions added. All reported completely clean and all were updated in previous 24 hours.
Lady of the house went on puter and swears she only played (local machine(old)) games, and visited Hotmail only. Dwnloaded nothing, installed nothing. Temp Int. Files & off line(cleared before scanning) showed only 1 site visited: Hotmail which constantly pops-up Ads from Mediaplex. I have not noted Mediaplex from any of my other frequented sites. Cookie showed Mediaplex and creation date of Sat. mar13. (she never deletes Temp Int. files).
After clean up , I went to Hotmail on Sunday then ran scan and there it was again but with Sun.14th date!
As for others not getting: ??? Noted on my 98SE security offers only Med. for Hotmail but my daughters XP Pro (didn't get) has a MEDIUM-HIGH setting into Hotmail which may have excluded this problem.
I don't KNOW if Mediaplex is actually MS(N) or only pays MSN for featured access. MSN might claim they didn't know and Mediaplex 'til now, never was caught in such an act. I certainly haven't. I suspect MSN has the same info coming to them already in Log in cookie (ASH-X File?).
Basically I felt this a major change in threats associated with Hotmail, as opposed to usual Virus (I caught 2 from Hotmail , AVG Fixed) that their McAfee seems to miss including one that had been in circulation for over 1 year. Do they really up-date?? Or only in the Pay MSN 8??!! Initially, I thought this was a virus due to attacking & disabling AVG. Since many use scheduled tasks to run their Adaware/Spybot scans, this was also logical attack venue to avoid discovery.
I normally run scans frequently but now, I guess ,daily or at least after every Hotmail visit.
Just wanted to alert everyone who would have no reason to suspect.
Posted by: tobeach Posted on: 03/14/2004 11:36 PM
http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-7598-0.html?forumID=51&threadID=15620&start=0