Web Browsers

[heidilaf77]

Hello. Can someone shed light on this problem? My Internet Explorer 8 is opening multiple unwanted new windows (tabs) when I click on any news links off the Yahoo! homepage. When this occurs, an URL flashes in the lower left corner of my screen: http://static. ak. fbcdn.net / connect / xd_proxy . php (spaces added by me so this link won't appear here!). My IE8 then opens multiple windows with about:blank in the address field and will not stop until I do a forced shutdown.

I am on a PC running Windows 7 using IE8. I've run the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, MalwareBytes Pro and my McAfee OEM pro and all say no items detected. This problem only seems to be occurring off the Yahoo! homepage on news link items.

Any clues what this could be and how to remedy it? Thanks!

[CCCarole]

Have you checked your Settings for Tabs under Tools>Internet Optipons> General tab> Settings to the right of Tabs.  Below is what I see using Internet Explorer Version 9.

[heidilaf77]

Hi CCCarole, thanks for your suggestion. I checked my Tabs settings, and checked the "Warn me when closing multiple tabs" box and unchecked the "Always switch to new tabs when they are created" box. This stopped the unwanted new tabs from opening on Yahoo! News links, though I am still getting the URL I pasted in (below, the static . ak etc. URL) flashing in my lower left corner of the screen. Should I assume that's some sort of annoying ad server? Should I email Yahoo about the problem? I can't be the only one experiencing it. Thank you!

[mickm]

Thanks for posting this.  I thought I was losing my mind - or had a virus.  It seems to happen to me with Yahoo News also.  Sometimes it will open many, many tabs before I'm able to shut it down.  Other times, when I shut down a Yahoo News story window I just read, IE8 opens up again with that story, I shut it down, it opens again, etc. etc.  I can see where the suggestions might stop the windows from opening but something is making this happen.  The suggestion seems like covering the problem vs. getting to the root of it.

[heidilaf77]

Postscript to my original message: I turned on InPrivate Filtering for IE 8, and that seemed to stop this problem on Yahoo! News. Only hitch is you have to turn the InPrivate Filtering on every browsing session, or at least I can't find a default setting to leave it turned on. Also while the problem seems to have cleared up on Yahoo! News (with or without InPrivate Filtering turned on) -- I do experience this problem of multiple unwanted browsers opening on other websites. Guessing it's an adware issue but I'm not a tech person. That's my .02.