Member Avatar for Elwaygirl

Hello Everyone,
I am not very technically inclined - at all - but I found this website while searching for an answer to my question and I'm hoping someone here can help me. I am very confused. I run Windows XP at home with IE 6.0 and was checking my history last night to try to get back to a page I had closed. I found links to websites that I have never visited. I know that pop-ups will show up in history even if they aren't visited, but one of these links indicated several pages that had been visited. I am the only one who uses my computer. If I understand hijacking correctly, my internet homepage would have been changed, right? It was not. But how is it possible to have sites in my history that were never visited? The sites were , happypride.com, and outpersonals.com. I'm so confused. Can anyone help? Thanks!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by dlh6213

Dani AI

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A short expert addendum that expands on what and started: unexpected URLs in an Internet Explorer history list are often the result of background page loads rather than someone manually typing those sites. Hidden iframes, tiny popup windows or browser add‑ons (BHOs/toolbars) can load remote pages invisibly and leave history records; adware/spyware authors have long used those techniques to fetch content without a visible browser tab. (bugzilla.mozilla.org)

Practical, non‑destructive checks (ordered and safe to run first). Inspect the raw IE history and the “typed URLs” registry entries instead of only looking at the IE History view: on older Windows/IE installations the browser keeps records in index.dat under the user Local Settings\History folder, and specialized viewers can show exact timestamps and hit counts. A quick registry probe shows typed entries:

reg query "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\TypedURLs"

Using a history viewer that reads index.dat/WebCache files will reveal whether those domains were actually requested and when. (nirsoft.net)

If the history shows background loads, look for the responsible component: check IE’s Manage Add‑ons and use Microsoft Sysinternals Autoruns to list Browser Helper Objects, toolbars, scheduled tasks and other autorun entries that can fetch web pages silently. Autoruns makes it straightforward to disable (uncheck) unfamiliar add‑ons without deleting files immediately. After disabling, reboot and re‑examine the history. (learn.microsoft.com)

If an unwanted add‑on or program is found, remove/uninstall it (Control Panel or its uninstaller) and run an up‑to‑date on‑demand anti‑malware scan. Do not try to delete index.dat while IE is running; use a proper viewer/cleaner. For very old systems (XP/IE6) consider imaging important data and moving to a supported OS — modern tools and protections are limited for out‑of‑support platforms.

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Member Avatar for deonnanicole

When my computer was infected with spyware, I had sites like that in my history that I hadn't visited either. While waiting for one of the experts to reply, you could run an Adaware and Spybot scan and let them fix anything they find. Then you could download HijackThis, save it in its own permanent folder, not a temp one or on your desktop, make sure all browser windows are closed, and scan. Save your log and copy and paste it here for one of the security experts to have a look at.

Member Avatar for Elwaygirl

Thanks so much for the info! I really didn't know anything about spyware and so I was very confused. Hmmm....spyware :( Sounds evil to me. Thanks for helping this computer moron get over a great deal of confusion. I was trying to figure out who was breaking in a using my computer and whether I knew that they were gay or not. :o Thanks again!

Member Avatar for dlh6213

If I understand hijacking correctly, my internet homepage would have been changed, right?

Homepage hijacking is definitely one symptom of spyware, but certainly not the only one. Spyware (and adware) can be on your computer without you even knowing it -- for awile anyway; eventually it starts causing problems that let you know something's wrong.

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