Router is not part of THIS problem from what I understand....using IE with poor source code is the problem. When you use IE and browse, IE sends a "query" and essentially gives permission to download data miners, trojans, and hi-jacks piggybacked onto web pages and these imbedded bugs attack IE and weave themselves into your system. Router firewall does not prevent this since you gave "permission" via IE packets to accept these files. If Firefox has "limitations", I am not seeing them here.
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I just downloaded Firefox and everything is working perfectly.No more closing out of any web pages,sending emails with attachments works great,and no popups.Thanks all for your help.
Not true. The communications protocol that IE follows with a web server is the same that all browsers follow - the HTTP standard dictates the message exchange and formats. Trojan horses, viruses, etc. aren't just haphazardly shoved down the pipe with IE blythly letting them run rampant. If scripting code is embedded in HTML, it will execute in any browser that supports scripting. However, the degree of scripted functionality that it's allowed to execute depends on your browser security settings. In addition, file downloads of executable programs have to be confirmed by the user. Unfortunately, too many people don't install MS updates, have unrestricted security settings and are cavalier enough to either just blindly click OK and accept any download or they have their browser settings configured to accept them without further verification. I've used IE for years and have never had a problem.
Interesting...but does not match my repeated experiences at all and I have all Microsoft updates and security settings set to the max, and use Zonealarm and a router. When I used IE, I had to wipe about 10 data miners a day from my computer. Additionally in last two months I used IE, I had two "browser hi-jack" episodes just by clicking on a web site, no confirmation screen of any download was involved. In one case, I was able to reset my homepage back to the desired one, the other time it somehow removed/moved my MS Notepad program and used it to script some weird crap on my computer and tried to force two of my programs to contact a web site. Zonealarm stopped it from going out, but I could see the repeated multi/daily attempts until I finally got rid of the crap by reformatting. Using Firefox for the last few months with the same exact daily web surfing habits has yielded not a single data miner (zero...I just checked again), no browser hi-jacks, and a squeaky clean Zonealarm log sheet. Also finally got rid of popups completely as a bonus, something I occasionally got in IE despite buying a "pop-up blocker". I absolutely do not believe that all browsers are the same. Just too big a difference in the daily garbage IE would drag home.
I'm not sure if you're aware of HTML Applications (.hta files), but they can be very dangerous as they have full access to the registry, hard drive, and anything else. All IE security features are completely disabled. The only tough part would be to get a user to open it. I'm not exactly sure why Microsoft allows them and I'm glad that it doesn't seem like too many people, especially hackers, know about them. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/hta/overview/htaoverview.asp
It's probably in your security settings. Sounds like you had low security settings configured in IE - in which case you could have unsafe ActiveX or VBscripting executed that could do as you describe.
Thursday : EliteTrader and other sites take ages to load. Have had this problem with IE before and have always managed to solve it. Friday : Run a battery of tests for viruses, spyware, trojans. Tweak settings, change configurations. Reinstall IE, latest security patches. Saturday : Search user groups in a last ditch attempt to find the miracle cure, to no avail. Today : Listen to onewaypockets and install Firefox. What a relief!