IE7 hijacked by MSN if you go to dell.msn.com?

[PPettit]

I noticed something odd today. When a user tries to visit "

http://www.msn.com",

they're automatically redirected to "dell.msn.com".

I checked my PC to see if that was happening to me as well. My homepage is set to "

http://www.msn.com".

When I started up IE7 it went to "

http://www.msn.com".

I then went to "dell.msn.com" and got a full screen takeover with some message congratulating me on buying a new computer pre-installed with Office Live or something like that. (This is not a new computer and I did not install anything related to Office Live.) Now, I'm always getting redirected to "dell.msn.com" instead of going to "

http://www.msn.com".

I was able to reproduce the same behavior even though I was using a non-Dell machine. Apparently, if you go to "dell.msn.com", you can't ever go back to just "

http://www.msn.com".

I know it's a trivial issue, but it bugs me that my homepage has been hijacked in this manner. Anyone know what's going on and how to fix it?

 

[PPettit]

Update

This is the message that takes over the screen if you visit dell.msn.com.

Congratulations on your recent purchase of a Dell Computer preconfigured with Windows Live. If you use the Windows Live applications included on this computer, some information will be sent to Microsoft. The data sent will include information about service performance, your machine and your service use. See

http://privacy.microsoft.com

for more information. The applications are governed by the Microsoft Service Agreement, available at

http://tou.live.com.

OK

I was able to counter the automatic redirection by choosing "Delete All" in Tools->Internet Options->Browsing History->Delete. I'm guessing that it's a cookie-related issue. I'll have to experiment a little more to be sure.

 

[PPettit]

Update 2:

It looks like it's the username@msn.com cookie that controls the redirection. You can delete this, but just going back to dell.msn.com will turn on the redirection again. There's no takeover screen, though. That's controlled by the username@dell.msn.com cookie. Delete that and the takeover reappears.