IE Assist 1

[ecmsb78712]

I'm not sure if this is the correct forum, because I'm not sure what this is. In Task Manager, there is an application called "IE Assist". Its icon has the letters "TGDC" on it in red, blue, green, and grey boxes.
I don't know which process it is; I can't connect any of the listed processes with it.

What is it?

Thanks very much!

Ed Cannon - University of Texas at Austin

 

[Kento]

Search your system for Tgdc.exe. If you find it you have some spyware. Regardless, get and run Ad-aware which is free and see what it finds.

http://www.lsfileserv.com/index.html

 

[Eris]

IE Assist is created by a program called Winy.exe. I don't know where it comes from. Ad-aware doesn't find it, Spyware DB doesn't have it listed. But getting rid of winy.exe gets rid of it. Sure would like to know what this is.

 

[gargouille]

Some ppl have noticed they get the winy.exe when downloading kazaalite.
It's some more of the "new generation" persistent ad things...
It may be enough to delete the file and the directory and reboot.
IF your IE Advanced tab has a setting to "Enable 3rd party browser extensions" uncheck it.

 

[ecmsb78712]

On Friday I told a local systems administrator about this, and he found the winy.exe file associated with IE Assist.
It had its own folder. He deleted that and then searched the registry, where it was listed as a browser plug-in. He removed it from the registry, also.

I have no idea where it came from. To my knowledge I've never had any kind of Kazaa or any other file-sharing thing on this PC (NT 4, IE 6). I keep up-to-date on Microsoft's critical updates.

In searching the other day, I found that there is some freeware called SpyBot that's for looking for spyware; it's at:

http://security.kolla.de/

I haven't tried it. And technically, I'm not supposed to use AdAware here because (1) it should be licensed for an educational institution -- so I haven't tried that either.

Thank you everyone for the information and suggestions.

Trivia. Last week the only other place that the sysadmin and I could find winy.exe on Google was on a West Coast Wine Users discussion list. Curious.

Ed Cannon - The University of Texas at Austin

 

[gargouille]

I'm reading that it comes from an overzealous marketing firm and represents the "new generation" of such...probably in response to ads just not working...sort of a "grab you by the collar" advancement.

Have experienced embedded items issues with something as seemingly benign as downloading drivers from BBS's where ppl may post them...with little tricks in them.

Anywhere there are floppies and stoodents and ICQ and chat and late-night cleaning up with computers running...there can be problems.

Here's a link to another alternative to Adaware...this one is absolutely free...have not used it but have meant to try it on one of my test beds when the time presents itself.

http://www.saltmeadow.com/privacy/contents.html

It came from another indispensable resource...

http://lists.gpick.com/index.html

 

[tuan2]

I got the same thing and I think it come from EBATE. This IE plug-in monitor the web site you're visiting and see if those site are their affliates. If the site is an affliate then it redirect you to the site with its signature so you can get the percentage of the sale. I think it a resoure hog as it bogs down Explorer after a while like playing DVD movie or such.
I deleted all the references to WINY in the registry and all is well now.