[Warlock]

Lately (ever since I had to reinstall Win2K) I've noticed that some links on Google are taking me to some off the wall search page. At the bottom on the link's description it has the correct site address (manually typing it works properly) but when I click the link itself,...instead of the page I get something like "Cool Searches" with 5-10 links on the subject I'd searched on Google.

Anyone else had this happen?

[Falcon]

Ask Jeeves

[Taristin]

...spyware? My parents had somethin like that methinks, it completely screwed IE up. I have them using nutscrape, because it's the least alien program I could find for them...

[Corsair mk. 2]

Forget about that how about this...
Search: French Military Victories
Click: I'm feeling lucky

Search: Miserable Failure
Click: I'm feelling lucky

people link the strangest things to keywords...

[vyper]

Funny the first time...


Anyway, I'd do the obligatory run of ad-aware Warlock.

[magatsu1]

I did a search for Bright (as in texturing) and got a sword/blades shop

[Mr. Vega]

Originally posted by Corsair mk. 2
Forget about that how about this...
Search: French Military Victories
Click: I'm feeling lucky

Search: Miserable Failure
Click: I'm feelling lucky

people link the strangest things to keywords...

Those are intentional "google bombings"

[Warlock]

Originally posted by vyper
Funny the first time...


Anyway, I'd do the obligatory run of ad-aware Warlock.

Yea,...reminds me I gotta redownload that. *sigh* I hate rebuilding my system

Speaking of,...anyone know of any good data recovery software that's not $200+ ? I found one for $40,...but it only located one of two partitions,...and not the one most needed. (RecoverItALL seems to be able to access everything,....but I just can't afford to dump out a couple hundred at the moment )

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Yeah, those annoying buggers are little more than search engines that hijack your search term. The other thing I've noticed over the past few months is that irrespective of relevance, sites selling something seem to be getting higher up google's results than those with information unless it's something rather off the wall you're hunting for info on.

Perhaps they simply know all of the tricks to elevate their position but google has made a trend towards those sites that have something to sell of late.
[/color]

[Anaz]

yeah...I've been getting those too...annoying as hell coz they seem to be exactly what you're looking for...

[Carl]

count yourselves lucky. when i type in www.google.com, it takes me to some stupid colorful 404 page. the only way i can get to the real thing is by going to http://216.239.37.99/

[Anaz]

carl:

1) spybot
2) adaware
3) search for "Hijack This"
4) manually edit hosts file

[Kazan]

Get Ad Aware and run it
run windows update and get all critical updates

[an0n]

Doesn't work. Doesn't work. Doesn't work. Doesn't work. Doesn't work.

It's the CoolWWWSearch hijacker thingy.

Far as I know, there's no way to get rid of it because it doesn't use any of the standard techniques for hijacking and hiding from AVS's and the like.

So all you can do is run S&D and Ad-aware whenever it happens.