stacy_g_ie asked:
Whenever I open a new tab on internet explorer, under ‘recent bookmarks’, since yesterday, Internet Explorer is showing me that I’ve recently bookmarked sites I haven’t ever looked at which are completely unfamiliar to me. (Some of the pages include, A site about postcolonialism, song lyrics for a band called screaming weasel, incredible face paintings, and aluminium screens.) When I look at my real bookmarks under ‘favourites’ on the toolbar, these aren’t listed. I never bookmarked these sites and I don’t know what’s causing it. Would I be right to suspect adware? I have Norton 360 installed but it hasn’t detected any viruses recently.
Whenever I open a new tab on internet explorer, under ‘recent bookmarks’, since yesterday, Internet Explorer is showing me that I’ve recently bookmarked sites I haven’t ever looked at which are completely unfamiliar to me. (Some of the pages include, A site about postcolonialism, song lyrics for a band called screaming weasel, incredible face paintings, and aluminium screens.) When I look at my real bookmarks under ‘favourites’ on the toolbar, these aren’t listed. I never bookmarked these sites and I don’t know what’s causing it. Would I be right to suspect adware? I have Norton 360 installed but it hasn’t detected any viruses recently.
Does anyone know what is causing this and how I find and remove whatever it is. Thanks 
Thanks, all of you, this was really helpful
Install Panda Cloud antivirus and install Malwarebytes antimalware. Scan with both.
i wud go to malwarebytes.org download malwarebytes anti malware for free and run the scan and remove to take that crap off
With both Norton Internet Security and Norton 360, free e-mail and chat support is available as well as free phone support.
They also have auto fix technology which will diagnose and fix common problems.
Use this dedicated support – you’ve paid for it.
Also, worth noting times these things have happened by looking at Temporary Internet Files :
Internet Explorer, Internet Options, Browsing History, Settings, View Files.
Look down Internet Address and Last Accessed to see URL of site, with time/date.
Need to know if others may have access to computer, what type of connection (wireless?).
Worth using Norton Support first.
All the best.
This sort of crap is often included with some ‘shareware’** software you installed … the authors of such software get paid to ‘advertise’ … so it’s not (really) a virus and your virus scanner won’t flag it …
Get ‘Hijack This’ (the free one) and examine all the MSIE ‘add-ons’ .. (typically the add-on will show up as HKCU or ‘Toolbar’ ) and delete the offender ….
Next time, avoid installing anything that is ‘ad supported’ .. (or better, get Firefox, since most of the ‘free stuff’ still only targets MSIE)
**Adobe & Dell etc. are also guiltily of this sort of crap behavior, BUT they only advertises other Adobe / Dell etc. stuff .. so you know who to kill