MSN Desktop Search Install Opens Virus Floodgate

[jsdoyle]

I've been running Avast Home for a good while now and it is an excellent product.  Just had to throw that in!

Anyway, I installed the new version of the MSN Toolbar yesterday and in doing that it installed the MSN Desktop Search feature.

Well almost immediately Avast started going off saying I had a virus in the some .pif and .scr files located in the temp directory for this product.

I kept clicking the delete or move to chest buttons.  It has stopped now but I'm really nervous about the install.  Should I remove MSN Toolbar?  Were these actual virus's that snuck in on the install??

Anyone have any clues on this?  I did a search of the forum before posting this so I apologize if it's been previously discussed.  I just couldn't find anything.

Thanks!

Scott Doyle

[RejZoR]

Strange,did those warnings went off during installation or later? Where did you downloaded this MSN stuff?

[jsdoyle]

I think I've figured out what was going on.  When the MSN Toolbar installs it also installs the MSN Desktop Search application.

I uninstalled it and reinstalled the application and paid attention to the install settings this time.  The Desktop Search by default is set to index all emails and email attachments.  In doing so it found 2 or 3 email I had received within 2 hours of installing the Desktop Search application with virus attachments.

AVAST had found these email attachments and had disabled them but apparently the MSN Desktop Search loaded the attachments in a temp directory as it was indexing the emails.  When it did so Avast found them again and issued a warning.

So I've disabled the auto indexing done by MSN Desktop Search and basically neutered the desktop search function.   The AVAST alerts have stopped.

[Spiritsongs]

  I hope that MSN Toolbar does NOT include their Plus IM,
     because there have been reports of it having spyware
    "bundled" with it .