Hi all,

First off: Can’t switch to Linux, Windows is a work requirement. Please spare me.

With that out of the way, here’s my problem:

Since 2-3 days I’ve been seeing ads disguised as a minimized video player popup on my Windows 10 Login Screen image.

Initially I thought I might have been watching something on youtube and forgot to close the tab and it autoplayed in the background until reaching this stuff by chance; but that turned out not to be the case (I’m also using Firefox exclusively, which I thought wouldn’t integrate with Windows, but I wasn’t 100% sure on that end).

I tried to research this a bit, but the only similar case I found was in an old reddit thread saying that some Windows update installed the LinkedIn App for them, which is not the case here.

Antivirus (Bit Defender) and Malwarebytes both give me a clean report.

So I did some more digging and right click that thing with my firewall set to deny all to figure out where this is taking me, and surprise…

Image

There’s a total of 100 connection attempts from Windows Search to around 10 different IP addresses, all of which belong to Microsoft.

I have not installed any updates in the last 14 days, no new software, and have not changed any system settings.

What did change is that I am currently not in China, where I normally live, but am on a business trip to Malaysia, where a bunch of services that are blocked in China might be accessible, and are now splicing in those (somewhat disguised) ads.

Does this happen to anyone else, and if so, do you have an idea how to get rid of it?

Thanks a lot in advance!

  • T (they/she)@beehaw.org
    5·
    5 months ago

    Sometimes I have doubts if some people I see posting here on Lemmy actually work. It seems like y’all live in this Wonderland where finding new jobs is extremely easy and convincing whole companies to use free software is easy like sending an e-mail. I’m honestly envious.

    But still, the fact that the person already said that not using Windows isn’t an option and you persisted questioning wasn’t very nice, so I see no reason for you to be rude and offensive when someone call out your behavior. Please keep it civil.

    • ssm@lemmy.sdf.org
      3·
      5 months ago

      But still, the fact that the person already said that not using Windows isn’t an option and you persisted questioning wasn’t very nice

      I wasn’t telling them that they should use Linux anyways, I wanted to know why they weren’t allowed to. Other user got needlessly hostile from me asking a question, so I responded in kind.