Prevent toolbars from being installed?

[bofhrevenge2]

Hi all, I am using IE6 on both Win2K SP4 and XP SP2 in a 2003 AD environment, until recently I thought I had IE pretty well locked down users can't get into the settings options so they can't cause any serious damage. Recently I have noticed search bars have started appearing e.g. the google search bar, I really don't want users to be able to do this.

Is there a way to prevent it?

Thanks.

 

[JSutor]

Have you thought about using group policy to lock this? If I remember there is a setting you can disable in group policy that will not allow changes to the toolbar, and depending on the situation you could block downloads altogether.

 

[bofhrevenge2]

I am using various Group Policy settings including one that "Dissables custonizing browser toolbar buttons" and " Dissable customising browser toolbars" yet they still seem able to add these toolbars. I imagine they arn't selecting them in a toolbar but installing them straight from the internet.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[bcastner]

As long as ActiveX is enabled, a toolbar can be installed.

http://www.computercops.biz/postt7736.html

This could help: SpyWare Blaster, freeware:

http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareblaster.html

 

[bofhrevenge2]

So there is no way to lock the IE interface so these toolbars cannot be added or are removed at startup.

I'm a bit wary of disabling ActiveX as MS say allot of web sites will fail to work correctly without it.

Thanks.

 

[amen1973]

As bcastner suggested Spyware Blaster, Javacool Software also makes a real-time protection against spyware that works great along with their Spyware Blaster

You can download Spyware Guard here:

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/sgdownload.html

 

[bofhrevenge2]

Yes i did look at them and they do look good, do you have experience of running them on 300 PC's tho?

This is the problem i don't really want to have to visit them all :-(

Cheers.

 

[lewic]

Does your network use a web-blocker program which uses keywords?

Solved the problem on our public-access PCs by adding 'toolbar', 'hotbar' etc to the list of banned words, so the toolbar download page is blocked. Google will still work, as the download page is separate. A bit fiddly, but is the only thing I have found works so far!

 

[bofhrevenge2]

I seem to of solved most of the problems by removing all of the users from the Power Users group.

Cheers.