? for comuter gurus re: browser add ons and plug ins

[Hopyard]

I run XP Professional SP 3 with MS Essentials for anti-virus and Threat Fire, also for anti-virus. Firewall is on.

The other day I noticed that somehow Skype had added (inserted) icons for running Skype from with in browsers. They did this to the 3 browsers I use; IE 8 , Chrome, Firefox in its latest iteration.

Certainly I did not knowingly give them permission to mess with my set up. It took me probably 20 minutes or more to uninstall their software from each of the 3 browsers.

Question-- 1) What do I have set up wrong, if anything, that allowed them to pull this off.
2) How can I prevent it in the future?
3) Does this indicate a significant vulnerability that I need to deal with?
4) Don't they have one heck of a nerve doing that? It ought to be illegal to just go ahead and change up stuff without authorization.

Any thoughts on each, particularly with security issues in mind. I'm afraid if they could do it, someone less well intended could too.

We do use Skype extensively, but not from within browsers and we have no intention of doing it that way. I didn't at all appreciate their coming into my "house" and messing with things in a way that cost me time to clean up.

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[Harryball]

Hopy, disable the auto update and auto install. That should help you with this type of installation. In Firefox as an example, go to tools then advanced, then update. Hope this helps.

[Hopyard]

Hopy, disable the auto update and auto install. That should help you with this type of installation. In Firefox as an example, go to tools then advanced, then update. Hope this helps.

Thanks.

[Rock and Glock]

Hope you get it fixed. That's a wee bit like taking the car in for an oil change and having them throw on new tires.

[high pockets]

Whenever you do "installs" select "custom" instead of "standard." That way you can select the elements you want to install.

[lambo969]

Go to tools, then select 'manage add-ons'. From there, you should be able to disable the ones that you don't want. Usually, there is an 'x' on the left or right of the tool bar as well, with which you can close the tool bar permanently and will never see it on your browser again. But make sure you at least disable the add-ons, because simply deleting them from sight won't stop your problem. Hope this helps.

[Gunsmoke16]

I've used AVG, MaCafee's, Norton, Threatfire and few other anti-virus programs. Norton is the WORST-it puts junk in your system and slows it down very much like AOL (0r is it A Oh Hell) does and to get rid of the invasive stuff that wraps around your OS, even to the restore point sections, you usually have to do a complete format...up to 3 times. MaCafee's is the 2nd worst. Threatfire isn't bad-it's proactive and catches some stuff, however I've had it conflict with several programs on my system running Win ME, until I swapped to XP.
Have you tried Avast? http://www.avast.com It is the best free AV Program I've used and catches almost everything better than anything else-throwing up a skull/crossbones and asking what you want to do with the problem.
I would turn off all auto-updates as gentleman suggested, even the Windows Auto Update. At good time late at night, click update for each browser and the windows update and just do them manually, otherwise they are always slowing you down, robbing you of computer speed and being a bugger like yours did.