IE6.0 Win98SE Are they spying on me?

Thanks, and glad to have this board back! I have recently noticed some "strange behavior "! Running Win98SE I am noticing that about every third or fourth time when I am at a site that requires a UserID and password, like Hotmail, my bank site, my credit card site,etc., from the time that I log in and get the "You are about to enter a secure area......." and before the padlock appears, I get a download into my computer of about 1.2 megs of "something" that takes a few minutes, and then the secure site page loads in the case of banks, credit cards, etc. or the "You are about to leave a secure area..." in the case of Hotmail. Just WHAT is 1.2 megs that needs to be downloaded into my 'puter every third or fourth time I log on to a secure site? A cookie is a few bytes only. Is there a "way" that I can see/supervise what is being downloaded? And where the download is coming from? And where is it going to? There are no other open pages on the 'puter, just IE6 window on the site I am accessing. This activity (and the time delay at entering a secure site) are starting to concern me. And if I drop the connection, every time after that that I try to log into ANY secure site, I get the 1.2 meg download. Any ideas where I should look? Google didn't seem to know what I was talking about.

 

Ali
Welcome to BBS!
I am not aware of any information or program that is required for
hooking up to a secure site that is that large.....1.2MB. To be on the safe side you should do a few things to make sure your system, does not contain spyware, and also install a free firewall which is rather nice actually. The firewall will alert you to any activity that is transferring information in or out of your computer and ask you to authorize it. If you do decide to download the firewall and install spend some time reading how it works and how to configure it for your maximum protection.
http://www.zonelabs.com/
About 1/2 the way down the page is a listing for their free download.
Now Spyware.
Spyware are programs that have the ability to send information from your computer to its parent program, phone home so to speak. This information the authors will say is used to make your surfing experience more enjoyable since they can tailor the information and ads more to your taste. However personal inromation is also included and if you read the fine print of their agreements you will see they reserve the right to share the information with other websites. Anyway most people are not aware of spyware and what problems it causes which also include
error on startup and shutdown becuase applications are trying to phone home and so on.
If you wish to download and scan your machine for Spyware use a program many of us use and recomend.
The find any spyware program is called AdAware and the vendor is Lavasoft. Go the the website listed and download the main program and also download the newest Reflist. Setup program read all instructions, and run. Follow its directions for spyware removal.
http://www.lavasoftusa.net/downloads.html
Keep us posted on your progress.
Dave