Something odd happening...Update

[Osc]

All today, almost every time I open my browser, another page opens - advertising various computer cleaning systems, and most recently Russian girls I haven't been anywhere I shouldn't, so I don't know what has started this off and don't know how to stop it. Any ideas you clever computer people? I've run a full scan in addition to the usual daily one and it's come up clean.

[Rodo]

Malwarebytes is good at picking up these sort of things where other systems don't

[Workingman]

Rosie, sounds as though you might have had your homepage hacked or have a hidden browser helper object (BHO).

Malwarebytes, as Rodo says, should find it and get rid, but if it is a bit more of a problem you could try this: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/downloa ... er/dl/125/ Download and run a scan. It will produce a report once it reboots the computer, or you can hit the "Clean" button and it will do everything on autopilot.

[Osc]

Thanks Rodo and Frank - I've downloaded and run Malwarebytes and fingers crossed it seems ok. I thought I had Malwarebytes but having discussed it with Mr. Osc, I remember that we got it for our old desktop and he got it for his first laptop.

[Suff]

A friend here in France downloaded "Oracle Java" two weeks ago, when a site told her she needed it. Last week I went and looked at it. Not only did she not download Java, but the malware she did download had replaced the browser Java helper with another infected program set and had also installed a program which modified IE and Chrome settings every time it started.

Took me a while to get it out.

On checking, once I'd resolved the issue, I found that the installed version of Java was correct as reported by the Oracle Java site. I don't think they've changed it in a year now. Mentioning it at my French class on Friday, I was told that several people are seeing this on a daily basis.

Must be a lot of hacked websites out there....

[Workingman]

For some time (months) now I have been getting a regular warning to update Adobe Flash player for Chrome, and with a button to Install. Of course, I never hit the button, I go to Adobe direct, but when I get there I always find that the version I have is already the latest version.

I can only assume that I have got Flash from a third-party site at sometime and it has bundled a timer with the download.

I am moving to W8.1 some time this week, so I am not that bothered, but it is a bit of a cheek. It is even worse if it is Adobe doing this, but hey-ho.

[Osc]

So - one lingering problem. I always used Firefox as my home page, but at some stage before these problems, I suddenly ended up with Bing So I worked out how to change it back to Firefox, so far so good. But if I open a second tab, it's Bing and also, on the Firefox page, my search engine is Amazon, so anything I put into search comes up as something on Amazon I really don't know what to do about that!

I think some of this started when SIL gave us a torrent url which he uses regularly and successfully, but seemed to dump all sorts of crap on my laptop, so I stopped the download and removed as much as I could find. Certainly the Bing thing dates back to then, a few weeks ago. I must say the Malwarebytes appears to have got rid of so much rubbish and things are moving better generally.

[Workingman]

Oh dear, torrents are notorious places for scumware.... People think that they are getting free films or music or software, but they often get a whole lot more besides. I only ever run them in a sandbox or a virtual machine and even then I scan any file I think that I want to keep. But that does not solve your problem Rosie.

Keep things simple. Clear out Firefox by going to the Firefox button>>>History>>>Clear Recent History>>> in the new window set 'Time Range to Clear' to 'Everything', then show details. Untick everything except 'Active Logins', then hit 'Clear Now'.

Try running the AdwCleaner from my other post and reboot. Run again and hit the Clean button. You might have to reboot again. All of that should clean Firefox.

Now, you say you know the date when the torrent url was used. Try doing a System Restore to before that date. Most things should now be OK, but if you still need to do your home page and search engine please come back.

[Osc]

Right, it seems to be sorted - I did the bleeping computer thing, Frank, but it made no difference and I couldn't understand the report So then I googled the specific problem, and saw that I could apparently do it through Mozilla troubleshooting, which I did and it seems to be ok now. Thanks for all your help

[Gal]

Osc I am very impressed, I am sat here like this at all of the above