System trying to go to www.thefancarpet with no browsers open

At first start of my Windows 11 Pro 22631.3296 today, after logging in with Microsoft account, I updated the definitions in Bitdefender Total Security and Malwarebytes 4 Pro, with no browsers or programs running yet, and I got a popup notification that Malwarebytes had blocked something I didn't have time to read it all. Went to Malwarebytes History and it showed an RTP detection event that blocked website www.thefancarpet.com as RiskWare. Further details from Malwarebytes follows:

Malwarebytes

Website blocked due to riskware

Learn about riskware. If you don't want to block this website, you can exclude it from website protection by accessing Exclusions.

Domain: www.thefancarpet.com

IP Address: 172.67.164.40

Port: 443

C: \Program Files (x86) \Microsoft\EdgeWebView\Application\123.0.2420.65\msedgewebview2.exe

File: C:\Program Files (x86)\ .. 0.65\msedgewebview2.exe
Since I had just logged on and no browsers had been opened, I am concerned with why Edge browser is running on its own and trying to go to the fancarpet.com website.
I opened my Brave Browser and went to Trustpilot website to see what they had to say and they said it is a safe site with a user rating of 4.5. I had never even heard of this website before, but decided to try to go to www.fancarpet.com website, but Malwarebytes Browser Guard stopped me, with the statement: "Malwarebytes Browser Guard blocked this page because it may contain malicious activity".
I ran Autoruns utility and found nothing obvious that would start up browsing to fancarpet.com after Windows login, but in Winlogon category I wonder if stopping the following entry would help: "MicrosoftEdgeAutoLaunch_1411F4088F7D8F5F59BF0460EECB71EC Microsoft Edge (Verified) Microsoft Corporation C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe Wed Mar 27 01:39:36 2024" .
My main Browser is Brave, but occasionally I go to the taskbar widget and open Edge browser through the Widget if I see something interesting. I do like the taskbar widget and would prefer not to uninstall the Edge browser.
Any suggestions would be appreciated, on how to stop this nuisance and possibly serious automatic attempt, apparently by Edge, trying to open a website when no Browsers are in use.
Thank you

Perhaps I missed something, but did you scan your system with malwarebytes and bitdefender?

Did they find anything?

I would reset your browsers, and look at any recent extensions you might have installed recently.

andrew129260 said:

Perhaps I missed something, but did you scan your system with malwarebytes and bitdefender?

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Absoloutly. I’d be scanning with everything possible.

What have to installed lately or run dagar7 that might possibly be suspect?

Edge seems to always having something going on in the background, might use Task Manager and End Task on all instances listed. I had a site always giving reminders and cleared the cache, stopped it.

Thanks for the recommendations. I have done a full System Scan with Bitdefender and a Threat Scan with Malwarebytes with both showing a clean system. Since the data I posted originally seems to point to the Edge Browser, I deleted all Cookies and site data and set a Block to prevent www.thefancarpet.com from saving and reading cookies on Edge. I shut the computer off and then started it up like I did this morning and have not had a repeat of the problem. If I see it again, I'll try @Bertons recommendation to check out Task Manager.
@antspants - only new program installed in last week was AOMEI Backupper Pro.
Thanks again

Good result then AOMEI doesn’t come with hidden installers, at least not when downloaded from AOMEI directly.
Have a look in your Edge settings (I don’t use Edge) Startup page etc. In Firefox I can ask it to open a set of web pages when I open Firefox. I’d doubt the website ended up in your Windows Startup folder, it would open every time you booted. Malware concerns me but you seemed to have scanned appropriately.

dagar7 said:

Thanks for the recommendations. I have done a full System Scan with Bitdefender and a Threat Scan with Malwarebytes with both showing a clean system. Since the data I posted originally seems to point to the Edge Browser, I deleted all Cookies and site data and set a Block to prevent thefancarpet.com from saving and reading cookies on Edge. I shut the computer off and then started it up like I did this morning and have not had a repeat of the problem. If I see it again, I'll try @Bertons recommendation to check out Task Manager.
@antspants - only new program installed in last week was AOMEI Backupper Pro.
Thanks again

Click to expand...

I would still reset edge, but thats just me.

Alternatively, you could download autoruns, and enable the virustotal option which can look for nefarious entries running. There is also a way to view the addons for internet explorer/edge in there.

Have a good one

@andrew129260 Thanks for the info about Autoruns. I mentioned that I had run it in my first post and didn't find anything about thefancarpet.com, but I did not know about enabling the VirusTotal option. When I started computer this morning I did not have the previous problem, but I went ahead and reran Autoruns with VirusTotal option. It found a few items that were not a problem like HashTab, 7Zip, etc., but nothing alarming relative to the previous issue. Since I had previously deleted all Cookies and site data and set a Block to prevent www.thefancarpet.com from saving and reading cookies on Edge, I think all is good.

Can you please stop putting live links to that site in your posts!

z3r010 said:

Can you please stop putting live links to that site in your posts!

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To show a full link but make it unusable I put a space in it somewhere, usually in the .com part.

dagar7 said:

@andrew129260 Thanks for the info about Autoruns. I mentioned that I had run it in my first post and didn't find anything about thefancarpet.com, but I did not know about enabling the VirusTotal option. When I started computer this morning I did not have the previous problem, but I went ahead and reran Autoruns with VirusTotal option. It found a few items that were not a problem like HashTab, 7Zip, etc., but nothing alarming relative to the previous issue. Since I had previously deleted all Cookies and site data and set a Block to prevent www.thefancarpet.com from saving and reading cookies on Edge, I think all is good.

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sorry I had missed you ran autoruns there in the first post. I skimmed it too quick. Glad it's resolved for now.