I assume evil folks such as freescratchandwin.com are totally 100% evil. However, since my computer was already hosed with their "service," I risked a few clicks and found their uninstaller, under their help file. "In the unlikely event that you want to uninstall freescratchandwin.com, here is our uninstaller." I assumed this unistaller would do more damage, since I had not installed the product in the first place. But I had nothing to lose: an ad every 5 minutes made my computer worthless. Who would have thought: the uninstaller worked. Now the only mystery to solve is how it got installed in the first place.

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Just a followup for the record: I can't blame MS because what happened was my dear husband (the abbreviation for this on the oprah boards is "dh") logged onto my box, which he sometimes does and is perfectly ok, then clicked "yes" to a rouge dialog box which installed this app and is perfectly not ok. Actually partial blame to MS: what's the point of having discrete logon in XP without discrete app install and subsequent behavior? (I know the answer, it has to do with being an admin as opposed to restricted persmissions. Potential long tangent as to whether that concepts translates to my usability case, including worldwide evidence of everyone being an admin because normal people don't get this concept). There's nothing you can do to defend yourself against someone with posession of your box and a penchant for answering dialog box questions in the affirmative.

comment []2:58:31 PM