Presdio I don't know about you but I'm a touch cornflustered why non of the powers that be ,seem to be wanting to address the direct purpose of their Active x
There's only one "powers that be" that can address this and I'm sure that rather than him avoiding it that he just hasn't seen it or he may not know himself. The forums are packages that are installed rather than being built from scratch. There's also addins that can be installed.
I haven't seen any reference to any kind of active x in the code that is viewable just a lot of java script. That doesn't mean that there isn't something being used by a header file or some other file though. I don't get notices of active xs trying to install from this site and I don't have any site set as trusted. I also don't advise setting sites as trusted.
So, if the site is trying to install something on someone's PC then it's probably something that is pretty common and that I picked up somewhere else. A quick time file or maybe adobe flash.
Ranch, once you get the message that there is an active x trying to download if you accept you should get a chance to see what the file is and a second option to cancel the download.