What is ActiveX, is it good or bad?

"This page provides potentially unsafe information to an ActiveX control." What is this?

• I just turned my computer on and my yahoo messenger popped up by default like all the time and I got a notification from Adobe saying my Flash Player needed an update. So I updated it and after it close and everything I got the following message: "This page provides potentially unsafe information to an ActiveX control.Your current security settings prohibit running controls in this manner. As a result, this page might not display correctly." "http://i41.tinypic.com/345f0vr.png" There is an image of the error message. As you can see, the window for it doesn't say what program is returning the error. It just says "web browser." I am pretty sure I have had a virus recently, as when I open Internet Explorer (yeah I know. I only use it because it is my default gif player and I am too lazy to download another one/switch it to another one) I get prompted by Yahoo toolbar to run out of security mode or w/e for IE. I click "don't ask again" and then I click "don't allow" but then three more windows pop up asking the same thing and I have to do it for all of those again and then it will keep popping up like 1 or 2 windows at a time again. It happened after I downloaded a toolbar which allows me to search from any webpage on a website with several downloadable MP3 files (don't worry, completely legal ones, people) and uninstalled that and it went away, then I downloaded Yahoo messenger and now it does it again, except this time the title of the program asking for permissions is Yahoo Toolbar, rather than previously when it was titled after the MP3 search toolbar. Anyways, back to this error message, I just found, as I was typing this message, I clicked the "show desktop" button and it was gone, then I clicked on Yahoo Messenger to bring it back up and the error message came along with it, so apparently that is what it was pertaining to. Anybody have any advice on what I should do? Thanks.

• Answer:

  You are using an unsafe browser...get Firefox end of active X problems...