I can't believe this. I use only Linux on this machine, but I'm a web developer and I have to run Internet Explorer (through WINE, a Windows compatibility layer) in order to test webpages from time to time. My copy of Internet Explorer has ActiveX totally disabled (in fact, I don't think I could enable it if I wanted to), and I have never clicked a confirmation dialog since I first installed it a few months ago.

But somehow, I got adware in it. Internet Explorer is set to start up at about:blank (a built-in blank page), but suddenly whenever I start up the browser, I get one or two popups and then the whole thing freezes. When I quit Internet Explorer (and thus, WINE) I'm ad-free. In fact, I don't get any ads when I'm using Photoshop through WINE either, just Internet Explorer.

So to summarize, I got adware using Internet Explorer with ActiveX completely disabled, never clicking on a single dialog box, with very very little use. I couldn't have asked for a better testament to just how insecure Internet Explorer is. I visit at least a hundred different websites a day in Firefox and have never in my life had any kind of problem from it. Meanwhile, visiting maybe one webpage a day on average in Internet Explorer, one of those webpages (and unfortunately, I don't know which one it was) convinced Internet Explorer that it would be an excellent idea to install adware without giving me the slightest warning. And in case you're curious, every webpage I have ever visited in Internet Explorer on this computer, I also visited in both Firefox and Opera.

It looks like I'm going to have to wipe out Internet Explorer, likely my entire WINE setup including Photoshop as well, and reinstall everything in order to get Internet Explorer to work again. I can't believe that even on Linux, Microsoft is giving me hell. Thanks a lot guys, it was a good reminder never to buy your crap again.

Update 2005-10-24: I've recently made several changes to MSIE 6 data in my Web browser standards support resource. In case you were curious, considering this post, I tested those features on my mom's laptop. My Internet Explorer is still busted.

Update 2005-11-14: I forgot to mention, I managed to fix up Internet Explorer without having to clear out my whole WINE setup. I opened up Internet Explorer 4, which wasn't affected by the adware, went to Internet Options, and unchecked the Enable third-party browser extensions option. Magically, my other Internet Explorer versions started working again, although for some reason they can't seem to connect to any Google-related site, including all of its search engines and Blogger. Oddly, I can't find any other sites that don't work. Conspiracy? ...Probably not.

Well... proves once and for all that Microcrap and Internet Exploiter suck...

I don't even use them - I develop web pages using an emulator and it works great with no IE!

Cheers,

Ryan Jones