What is the activeX control "TODO", on a yahoo page?

Question

When I log into my yahoo account, My internet explorer blocks a activeX control. I get a small dropdown menu at the top of the page (bottom of the browser controls) that says; "This website wants to run the following add-on: 'TODO: ' from 'TODO: (unverified publisher)'. If you trust the website and the add-on and want to allow it to run, click here...

Yahoo works fine without the control installed. I tried to do a web search but TODO is way too vague. If ya know how to tell what it’s for, and why it wants to run every time I change pages on Yahoo. Please tell me. Also if you know how to turn it off so it wont ask me again, I would like to know that as well. (Besides installing it), as it’s obviously not needed for the page to load correctly. I still get all the ads, and all the links work on the page, everything seems to load and work. So why is it telling me that Yahoo needs me to install it, and exactly what is it going to do? ( I have IE7 Beta3)

Answer 1

ActiveX are software components from Microsoft. They enable sound, Java applets and animations to be integrated in a Web page. With an ActiveX-enabled browser (ie Internet Explorer only) ActiveX controls can be downloaded as part of a Web document to add functionality to the browser (similar to Java applets). In particular ActiveX enables seamless viewing of Windows files of all types, eg spreadsheets, and in combination with other technologies such as Java and scripting languages, makes possible the development of complex Web applications. You are viewing an information bar on the top of your page indicating to enable active content as a part of security settings incorporated in IE browser as active content can be a malacious script or some file which is getting downloaded on your PC and might infect the same if the web server does not has a valid certificate or is unregistered.
In some cases like yahoo (as u r saying) it does not matter even if you block or don't enable the active content, however in other cases it may lead to an improper display of a web page. So it is always preferred to manually enable or disable download of activeX based content while browsing any site.