Edit: Folks, I keep telling you it’s VERY unlikely to be malware.
I’ll update you and apologize to each if my credit card gets wiped or something but I’m quite sure I’m safe, don’t worry.
Also sorry for blaming Microsoft for what is apparently my fault.
I accidentally clicked Microsoft Edge on my work computer with Windows 10 and couldn’t close it — it just keeps reopening. It takes File Shredder to stop it from opening again, at least until the computer restarts.
Notice the ads, most are extremely sketchy (my frequent reload in previous takes caused the ad server + my work VPN to rate limit me):
- China warns:
%user.currency%is dead! (Yeah, sure. Obvious propaganda. Generic pictures or faked images of a worthless banknote giveaway.) - 63-year-old figured out! (Does not say what but a pic of obviously young-looking feet.)
- Make boatloads of money with AI! (aka auto-trade very uncompetitive options, no guarantees on withdrawals of any wins)
- Save money using solar! (The company is legitimate but the deal on panels is probably not great)
- Buy yourself a great new FPCEILPTBSP! (You can’t tell what it is and neither can we! (Apparently TV wall mount))
- Losing hair?
- Millionaire has genius method you can try (but give us money first, making his pic transparent so we can put him in front of
%user.country.flag%was difficult) - Game! Yay! (Microtransactions galore!)
- Get EVERYTHING in your car fixed (by a stock photo mechanic!)
“which you pay Microsoft for”
No. That’s not an Edge feature, that’s your shit that you broke yourself. I’m running five computers with Windows 11 and none of them have this behaviour, it’s not Microsoft doing partial rollouts as that would be all over tech news.
Don’t ask for opinions if you’re going to argue with everyone that clearly understand things better than you do.
Delete everything on your computer, do a full format of your hard drive, change all the passwords that computer could have had access to, don’t try to delete Edge from your next install of Windows as it’s a necessary feature and you just got pwnd for being an idiot that couldn’t understand that.
That’s clearly misconfiguration, not malware. Do you think modern malware would do obvious shit like this? I checked all installers on VirusTotal and most were FOSS, too.
Anyway, I know removing Edge can do weird stuff, it disabled biometric login on another PC.
The computer is not high-stakes, I don’t do personal stuff there and this is mild annoyance at worst. I’ll have ESET check the drive and reset Edge-related config.