Error Code 418.
 

Does anyone know a safe way to get rid of this? It's not a real problem, just irritating that I have to sign into AOL twice every time I load it. Put Error Code 418 into Google and I get screenloads of "Guaranteed success, free download, just click here" sites but my wife warns against this; some sites are simply scavengers trying to get as much personal information as they can while others are set up by nitwits trying to load other nasties onto my computer.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

It's ok; just updated and ran AVG. I had more cookies than a bakers and now I have none~~~~~~~~~~:>)

The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) is a group tasked with setting Internet standards so web servers uniformly present information according to a specific set of rules.

Code 418 was literally joke set to display "I'm a teapot" in a web browser, and was never intended to be used by web server administrators. This code was defined more than a dozen years ago as an IETF April Fools' joke and never meant to see the light of day.

Unfortunately, I think your machine (or at the very least, the server you are accessing) might have a virus.

Can you share what site you are trying to access? AOL.com?

"Can you share what site you are trying to access? AOL.com?" That's the one. Contrary to my last post, it's either back or never left. AVG found around 30 cookies which I deleted, but Error code 418 still pops up. When I log on it doesn't say anything like "I'm a teapot", it just says "OOPS. Error code 418. Please try gain later". Try again later means immediate; on the second attempt AOL loads without a problem. I can switch screen names within AOL with no problem, it's just when I go of line then back on again that it appears, and only on AOL. Sites like Political Chat which I load from my favorites don't get this intercept. It only started about 2 weeks ago so despite the free version of AVG running appearing on the task bar whenever I switch the computer on, 418 seems to have crept through.

Closing AOL, going on the Google sign in page, switching to Political chat, closing it then back to AOL doesn't make the intercept appear. This only happens after I go from the desktop, load FireFox, go to "my favorites" and click on AOL. I doesn't appear to do any harm, but I'm worried that having got into the system it could work its way through to other sites. Is it just an irritant, or do you reckon it could cause real damage.