So how did I get infected in the first place?

I am not in trouble.. But you may find this link handy to point ppl you know toward when they get bugged with spyware/adware/p0rn-ware.. (If this has been posted B4 please let me know .. I was slack in my search)

Find the full story here

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A frequently heard question is "how on earth did I get infected with all that spyware in the first place?"

It usually happens because of lax security settings.

Here are a number of recommendations that will help tighten them, and which will contribute to making you a less likely victim:

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Cheers

Nice info.
It is defintly good pratice to set all scripting in Internet Explorer to 'disable' or at least to 'prompt'.
Also set the cookies level to a somewhat higher level.
Preferably don't use Internet Explorer at but switch to opera or netscape.
There are a couple of unpatched 'drive-by download' exploits in the wild.
If you view a page with default security settings then it is possible to have an executable executed automaticly.
Also Internet Explorer is vulnarable to a couple of denial of service attacks (for some there is not even scripting required).

Once again: nice info

yeah... the new scripting is a beast. i went to one site that i had mistyped the url. they had an auto-download script for adware, but here was the worst part, it looped. my settings are set to prompt so it asked me do you want to dl, i say no. it pops back up... infinitely. so i can't even close the webpage because of the dl prompt. i had to ctrl + alt+ del and end task to kill it.... gotta love people and there programming. i had a friend get a virus that way too...