Where did the little "flashing pumpkin" on the bottom toolbar come from and how can I get rid of it?
On the bottom toolbar, right hand side, next to my incredimail icon, recently appeared a little "flashing pumpkin". I have not clicked on it because I don't know where it came from or why it is there and do not want to risk getting a virus. When you hover over it with the mouse, it says "Happy Halloween" in the dialog box that appears above it. If you right click on it, the only options are "Open Message" or "Leave it"?
All Replies (2)
This is on Firefox's Add-on Toolbar, or added to the web page?
Either way, as the first step, I suggest the following: review your extensions on the following page and disable ALL nonessential extensions. Only keep enabled the ones so useful that you'd rather turn off your computer than browse without them.
orange Firefox button or classic Tools menu > Add-ons > Extensions category
After restarting Firefox, is the pumpkin gone?
Can you attach a screenshot?
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenshot
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-do-i-create-screenshot-my-problem
Use a compressed image type like PNG or JPG to save the screenshot.
See also:
You can also do a malware check with some malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
You need to scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.
- http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
- http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware
- http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx - Microsoft Safety Scanner
- http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Windows Defender: Home Page
- http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Spybot Search & Destroy
You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.
See also:
- "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked