does halflife2.net secretly install adware/spyware on people's computers?

Dgenatron

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So you wonder why I ask this. I will tell you why. There is this "autocomplete" drop-down URL that keeps appearing on my IE search field. The weird part is that this URL won't go away even after I clean the history, delete cookies, and delete temporary internet files (via either IE or control panel or manual deletion of files). When I check the internet explorer history (ie: Ctrl+H), the URL in question appears when I search for "www.h". The only problem is that it cannot be deleted. This procedure was repeated at least half a dozen times while all other programs running in the background were closed in order to ensure that none of them was locking the information I was trying to delete. Each time I went through this drill the computer was rebooted.

No luck. Going to Internet Options -> content -> autocomplete -> uncheck websites, seemed to work for a moment. The URL was gone. The autocomplete field no longer appeared. So I restarted my computer yet one more time, enabled autocomplete, and to my surprise the URL kept reappearing each time I typed "www.h". Frustrated, I even restored my computer to the settings from last month ago (win XP) and the problem did not go away.

The URL, which by the way, refers to a page located at http://www.halflife2.net/forums is secretly being stored somewhere in my computer. I have searched the registry and actual files and folders and there is not any obvious reference to it.

The reason I have to believe this is an adware is that some of these programs try to lure users to particular websites in order to perform malicious activities on their computers. By having this autocomplete URL appear each time I type www.h, I am, in a way, behind lured to http://www.halflife2.net/forums.

Something is clearly wrong here. If the webmaster or administrator has any clue as to cause of this problem, and can help me, I would greatly appreciate it.
 
Dgenatron said:
does halflife2.net secretly install adware/spyware on people's computers?

No .
 
We've been online for two years, had over 40,000 registered members and this is the first time we've been accused of something like this.

Do the maths, I think you're alone.

There was an incident around this time last year where we were using banner ads. People were having problems with those, but that was a third party advertising server doing naughty stuff and not ourselves.
 
My answer was better.
 
Dgenatron said:
So you wonder why I ask this. I will tell you why. There is this "autocomplete" drop-down URL that keeps appearing on my IE search field. The weird part is that this URL won't go away even after I clean the history, delete cookies, and delete temporary internet files (via either IE or control panel or manual deletion of files). When I check the internet explorer history (ie: Ctrl+H), the URL in question appears when I search for "www.h". The only problem is that it cannot be deleted. This procedure was repeated at least half a dozen times while all other programs running in the background were closed in order to ensure that none of them was locking the information I was trying to delete. Each time I went through this drill the computer was rebooted.

No luck. Going to Internet Options -> content -> autocomplete -> uncheck websites, seemed to work for a moment. The URL was gone. The autocomplete field no longer appeared. So I restarted my computer yet one more time, enabled autocomplete, and to my surprise the URL kept reappearing each time I typed "www.h". Frustrated, I even restored my computer to the settings from last month ago (win XP) and the problem did not go away.

The URL, which by the way, refers to a page located at http://www.halflife2.net/forums is secretly being stored somewhere in my computer. I have searched the registry and actual files and folders and there is not any obvious reference to it.

The reason I have to believe this is an adware is that some of these programs try to lure users to particular websites in order to perform malicious activities on their computers. By having this autocomplete URL appear each time I type www.h, I am, in a way, behind lured to http://www.halflife2.net/forums.

Something is clearly wrong here. If the webmaster or administrator has any clue as to cause of this problem, and can help me, I would greatly appreciate it.

I...err...that's the standard IE cache. If for whatever reason you're not happy with this (let me iterate this point again) standard IE feature (and in fact, a feature available in just about every browser available), I recommend turning off Auto-Complete. Notice how in your description of the problem you state that it went away when you turned this off, but came back when you re-enabled it? Do you see a correlation? To illustrate my point, please see the attached file.
 

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Dgenatron said:
By having this autocomplete URL appear each time I type www.h, I am, in a way, behind lured to http://www.halflife2.net/forums.

Something is clearly wrong here. If the webmaster or administrator has any clue as to cause of this problem, and can help me, I would greatly appreciate it.

Wrong you say? Your browser determines that you visit the site www.halflife2.net and will assume thats the URL you where typing. Now if you also visited another site starting with h it would bring down a list for you to choose from.
 
I smell conspiracy.....what are all these .exe's and and crazy .dll's im asked to download when i come here!??!? lawl
 
Let me get this straight.

He's saying that every time he types in 'www.h' it comes up with 'www.halflife2.net'? This is a problem how?
 
it's a spyware virus adware hax we're using!
 
Dgenatron said:
does halflife2.net secretly install adware/spyware on people's computers?
Yep, damn busted. Woulda got away with it if it wasn't for you pesky kids!!! *shakes fist*
 
Guys, what he is trying to say is that even when he clears his cache and history and all that junk, it still comes up. And if I read correctly, whenever he types www.h he can't type anything else but www.halfife2.net/forums.

Sounds like something wrong there.
 
Well I learned something new with this thread.

In Internet Explorer, by going from Tools --> Internet Options, then Content --> AutoComplete, and finally by clicking on Clear Forms, I can now remove all the web addresses and stored search engine keywords from memory. Neat. :)
 
Sulkdodds said:
Let me get this straight.

He's saying that every time he types in 'www.h' it comes up with 'www.halflife2.net'? This is a problem how?

I dunno about you guys, but I think the original poster just gave the coder monkeys an idea :|
 
Chris_D said:
We've been online for two years, had over 40,000 registered members and this is the first time we've been accused of something like this.

Do the maths, I think you're alone.

There was an incident around this time last year where we were using banner ads. People were having problems with those, but that was a third party advertising server doing naughty stuff and not ourselves.
Actually, it wasn't exactly the FIRST time ever, but I think the first time since oh....early to mid last year.

Essentially Pi's response. ^_^

Oh...yes....about that Clear Forms thing you can do too.......I know nothing!!! /runs
 
Javert said:
Actually, it wasn't exactly the FIRST time ever, but I think the first time since oh....early to mid last year.

Essentially Pi's response. ^_^

Oh...yes....about that Clear Forms thing you can do too.......I know nothing!!! /runs
Yes, it was the first time ever we've ever had problems with spyware.
 
It's a moot point, but I just remember somebody a long time ago having an issue with one of our ads that's all.
 
ok sorry for implying that halflife2.net had maliciously installed an adware on my pc. This is not to say, however, that it is not weird that out of all the URLs I have visited the only one that couldn't be flushed was the one from http://www.halflife2.net/forums.... Yes I actually typed the entire alphabet (ie: www.a, www.b, etc) and the only URL that kept coming up was that one, when I typed www.h.

I solved the problem by doing what I was told to do in this page: Unable to delete AutoComplete entries.

Basically it appears that this info was being stored in this index.dat file. All I had to was to login as another user with admin privileges and delete the index.dat file stored in my default username folder. It appears that I had a corrupt cache(?).
 
Javert said:
It's a moot point, but I just remember somebody a long time ago having an issue with one of our ads that's all.
Possibly, but again if it was only one user...
 
Chris_D said:
Possibly, but again if it was only one user...
No, it was actually quite a large number of users that had a problem with a particular ad.
 
This kind of information is regularily stored in the windows registry. Want to blame someone, blame microsoft.
 
Halflife2.net is teh greatest site in the universe. Do not go to any other site. YOu are safe here.... here.....

/end of propaganda.
 
A True Canadian said:
Well I learned something new with this thread.

In Internet Explorer, by going from Tools --> Internet Options, then Content --> AutoComplete, and finally by clicking on Clear Forms, I can now remove all the web addresses and stored search engine keywords from memory. Neat. :)
BET YOU FIND THAT HANDY TO GET RID OF NAUGHTY EVIDENCE EH?

Eh?



I do :[
 
Opera, baby. Although if you don't know how to handle the options in IE (indeed, you are still using IE), you may consider abandoning the Internet entirely.

Note: I use the 64 bit version of IE when I use Windows x64. Is there another 64-bit browser? I'd even take Firefox or Mozilla if I had to. :E
 
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