[NCSA-discuss] windows cleanup following gratuitous download

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

running wxp pro with this weekend's updates

All I know about windows comes from helping the family who 
uses it for word processing. My son also plays games on it.

Tonite my son went to a new game site (flashportalgames.com) 
looking for new games, where he found that unbidden a bunch 
of downloads occured and he had a new twirling animated 
cursor, presumably the logo of the game site. While he did 
click on something, he didn't give any informed consent on 
what was about to happen.

I gave him a reminder talk about not accepting gifts from 
strangers.

I restored the default cursor, and found the new downloaded 
cursor along with about 100 other small files all with 
tonight's date in 
Documents_and_Settings/Username/LocalSettings/TemporaryInternetFiles 
all of which I deleted.

Norton AntiVirus with tonight's patches doesn't show any 
viruses. Neither ControlPanel/RemoveSoftware nor the 
Start/Programs show any new programs.

Questions I have

o how did a download and install of this cursor occur 
without him asking for/permitting it?

o is the executable that did the install still somewhere?

o is there some executable that was downloaded along with 
the cursor lurking around?

o what else don't I know about what happened tonight?

Thanks Joe


-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!