ItsGeekToMe.co

Q: I am using Cox webmail via https://webmail.east.cox.net/do/mail/folder/view.  Until November of last year I just entered my user id and password and I was looking at my email inbox.  Now after I do this I get another UNNECCESSARY screen that says“Want to know more?  Please tell us your location so we can show you all the Cox services available in your area.”  I can then enter a zip code or select one of 32 cities on an outline of the U.S. before finally making it to my inbox.  I access my email several times a day and it is very irritating to have to keep entering my zip code over and over, especially since there is NO benefit to me to do so. Would you please show me a way to access my Cox email without entering my zip code?  I have contacted Cox about this via emails and phone calls and have tried all of their suggestions except for one. They suggested I make cox.net in Freeport my home page in Internet Explorer and there is NO WAY I would do that.

– William M.
Freeport, Florida

A: It never fails to amaze me some of the advice people get from Customer Support personnel who are supposed to be helping to solve their problem.  First of all, I can see no way that making their site your home page would have any effect on your problem.  Theoretically, all this would accomplish would be to display that screen every time you launch your browser, instead of just when you’re trying to access your mail.

I took a look at the link you provided, and was taken to a login page for Cox webmail (without any intervening “Want to know more?” screen).  One of the first things I noticed was a checkbox that says “Remember User ID”.  If you’re not on a public computer, checking this when you sign in might be a good fix for you.  I Googled the phrase that you quoted, and my search returned a number of pages – both Cox and non-Cox.  I found that rather interesting, since it would seem to indicate Google’s webcrawler may be getting confounded by this as it tries to sort through the links available on Cox’s website.  I decided I needed more information, so armed with your question, I called Cox customer service directly to see whether I could get any better advice than you did.  Robert, who works on the Baton Rouge call center floor patiently listened to the problem, saying “Right.  Right.” then said that this behavior is normal, and happens each time you log into their system from scratch.  He confirmed that it is a redirect from their original site, and in fact, happens for “just about anything you do” on their site.  He said there is a “Keep me logged in” setting that would prevent this, although the closest thing I could find was the checkbox I mentioned above.  One other thing he mentioned as a potential cause of this is if you’re clearing your browser’s cookies between logins.  That made probably the most sense of anything I heard about the issue, since many websites use the cookie they store to hold flags of whether certain pages have been displayed.

Q: Did a restart recently and when it was finished my icons were moved/re-sized and or missing. The wallpaper was also changed. A second restart corrected everything. Is it possible or even likely my home PC has been hacked or slaved without leaving a trace? Full scans with Windows Defender and F-Secure software shows no virus or malware on my system?