Bravo, kudos & thanks to MoneyBagger for helping FT and rest of us - some of us knew something just isn't right ... Using Firefox on my own laptop now but when on the road, it isn't a matter of choice to avoid or not use IE 8 or 9.

When we had similar issues & popups randomly over at Cruisecritic dot com, it drove some of us nuts for weeks - and it was tracked down only a few weeks ago (the details & threads/links are mostly gone/deleted & no longer available to members) - my best recollection of the summary finding was that it was malware codes/scripts hidden in graphics/logos commonly used by CC members, and it got in & launched itself - very similiar MSE phony threat reports and offering to fix it (as we've saw them here on FT.)

Furthermore, the danger and risks pose is that, one's credit card/names & other personal info were exposed in the course of purchasing/authorizing/downloading the said "fixes" in solving the security problem - escalating and potential risking hundreds if not thousands in charges to one's CC account.

The practice goes back to the 1980's when we're surfing AOL and bragging about 56K modems - we've come a long way but the bad apples are still out there, and getting more sophisticated. My firewall, antivirus & spyware logs and reports all looked clean, deep & full scanning sweeps done showing no harm inflicted thus far, yet (fingers crossed )