What's Going On With Google? I Only Get Shopping Crap Up In Searches?

[orleans]

i googled al franken
i got links for this crap:

Franken for SenateDemocratic candidate in 2008 for US Senate from Minnesota. Find endorsements, events calendar, biography, blog, videos, issue positions and how to get ...
www.monstermarketplace.com - 18k - Cached - Similar pages

Al Franken for Senate | Meet AlYou might know him as the host of Air America Radio's "The Al Franken Show," the ... When Joe Franken's quilting factory went under -- as Al likes to say, ...
www.shopica.com - 28k - Cached - Similar pages

More results from www.alfranken.com »
Franken on top in Minn. recount; Coleman to sue - Yahoo! NewsA Minnesota board on Monday certified results showing Democrat Al Franken winning the state's US Senate recount over Republican Norm Coleman, whose lawyer ...
www.ave99.com - 22 hours ago - Similar pages

Al Franken - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaHe created characters such as self-help guru Stuart Smalley and routines such as proclaiming the 1980s to be the "Al Franken Decade". Franken was associated ...
www.mit-iqexam.com - 122k - Cached - Similar pages

Al Franken Web - A Fair and Balanced Fan PageAlFrankenWeb. A Completely Unofficial Al Franken Forum (click here for the official site) · Click here for AFW Chat · Contact the administrator ...
www.shopica.org - 7k - Cached - Similar pages

Al Franken (I)Writer: When a Man Loves a Woman. Al Franken is best known for nearly two decades of work on "Saturday Night Live" (1975)... Visit IMDb for Photos, ...
www.hotjobs.com - 66k - Cached - Similar pages

Frankenlies.com :: The truth about the lies of Al Frankenfrankenlies.com is a must-see, research-based challenge to the book by Al Franken, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them ... The facts of Franken and his ...
www.areaconnect.com - 6k - Cached - Similar pages

Washington Wire - WSJ.com : Al Franken Camp Claims Four-Vote Lead ...Brad Haynes reports on Senate races. With the manual recount of Minnesota’s 2.9 million votes wrapping up, Democrat Al Franken‘s campaign claims to be ahead ...
crackle.com/c/the_karate_kid_i - 232k - Cached - Similar pages

Al Franken Does Mick Jagger - Boing BoingJan 4, 2009 ... As news is coming out of Minnesota that the state Canvassing Board is ready to certify Al Franken as the winner of the very close senate ...
www.findlinks.com - 17 hours ago - Similar pages

[billyoc]

1. Wow, that's bizarre. I'm not getting that.

[orleans]

3. shit! maybe i should shut down and restart. n/t

[Drunken Irishman]

2. Looks like you have a worm.

[Drunken Irishman]

4. Try a free adware program.

[orleans]

5. how does one kill a worm? n/t

[Drunken Irishman]

8. Check this site out.

http://www.lavasoft.com/

Or go find free software that searches for those pesky viruses and kills 'em.

[dsc]

6. make sure you are actually on google

I had a virus which caused me to go to other, crappy search engines when I did google searches.

[blogslut]

7. I have no idea

Tried clearing your cache lately? Checked for nasty spyware bugs? Are you sure you spelled it correctly?

[orleans]

9. yep. i'm running adaware now. n/t

[blogslut]

11. Use more than one spyware proggie

I like http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/hijackthis/download">hijackthis and http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/sbdownload.html">spywareblaster. Also, http://www.ccleaner.com/download">CCleaner is just wonderful for scraping the useless poo out of your machine.

[Runcible Spoon]

10. that happened to me just a while ago

for no apparent reason. When I restarted the browser, nothing. When I ran spyware and virus check, no change. 15 minutes later, google was back to normal. I know they're trying out some new search return protocols which are a bit sinister, have no idea if that is affecting things.

[sam sarrha]

12. i thought it was a new google thing to make money for them, i hate it

[NJmaverick]

13. Sounds like your computer is infected with spyware

[sam sarrha]

14. yea... Google

[Jamastiene]

15. Download Ad Aware, update the definition files for it and

run it. After it cleans your computer, reboot.

[orleans]

16. i'm trying. could you give me a couple links to google? i want to see if

it cleans up if i link to it from elsewhere.

2 links:
google's front page (for a search)

and then google "al franken" and link me to that? please? so i can compare what i was getting with what i should be getting, and maybe i could google from there.

on edit: i went on yahoo.com to try a search and got all those shopping links there too.

[Muttocracy]

17. here's what I get for the search in quotes on Google.com

#
News results for "al franken"

ABC News Senate recount: Franken's on top; Coleman to sue - 1 hour ago
Al Franken, with his wife Franni by his side, addressed the media on Monday after the state Canvassing Board certified the results of the US Senate recount. ...
Minneapolis Star Tribune - 1588 related articles »
Franken up 225 with recount complete; focus turns to court - Minneapolis Star Tribune - 1616 related articles »
#
Al Franken for Senate
Democratic candidate in 2008 for US Senate from Minnesota. Find endorsements, events calendar, biography, blog, videos, issue positions and how to get ...
www.alfranken.com/ - 18k - Cached - Similar pages
#
Franken on top in Minn. recount; Coleman to sue - Yahoo! News
A Minnesota board on Monday certified results showing Democrat Al Franken winning the state's U.S. Senate recount over Republican Norm Coleman, whose lawyer ...
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090105/ap_on_el_se/minnesota_senate - Similar pages
#
Al Franken - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
He created characters such as self-help guru Stuart Smalley and routines such as proclaiming the 1980s to be the "Al Franken Decade". ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Franken - 124k - Cached - Similar pages
#
Video results for "al franken"
Al Franken: Where Rush Limbaugh's Facts Come From
1 min 10 sec
www.youtube.com

Ann Coulter and Al Franken at The Connecticut ...
1 min 11 sec
www.youtube.com
#
Al Franken Web - A Fair and Balanced Fan Page
AlFrankenWeb. A Completely Unofficial Al Franken Forum (click here for the official site) · Click here for AFW Chat · Contact the administrator ...
www.alfrankenweb.com/ - 7k - Cached - Similar pages
#
Al Franken (I)
Writer: When a Man Loves a Woman. Al Franken is best known for nearly two decades of work on "Saturday Night Live" (1975)... Visit IMDb for Photos, ...
www.imdb.com/name/nm0291253/ - 66k - Cached - Similar pages
#
Frankenlies.com :: The truth about the lies of Al Franken
frankenlies.com is a must-see, research-based challenge to the book by Al Franken, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them ... The facts of Franken and his ...
www.frankenlies.com/ - 6k - Cached - Similar pages
#
Washington Wire - WSJ.com : Al Franken Camp Claims Four-Vote Lead ...
Brad Haynes reports on Senate races. With the manual recount of Minnesota’s 2.9 million votes wrapping up, Democrat Al Franken‘s campaign claims to be ahead ...
blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/12/05/al-franken-camp-claims-four-vote-lead-in-recount/ - 232k - Cached - Similar pages
#
Al Franken for Senate | Blog
The official blog of the Al Franken for Senate 2008 campaign.
blog.alfranken.com/ - 98k - Cached - Similar pages
#
Al Franken Does Mick Jagger - Boing Boing
Jan 4, 2009 ... As news is coming out of Minnesota that the state Canvassing Board is ready to certify Al Franken as the winner of the very close senate ...
www.boingboing.net/2009/01/04/al-franken-does-mick.html - 22 hours ago - Similar pages
#
Blog posts about "al franken"
AL FRANKEN RECOUNT LEAD: Final Count Still Needs To Be Settled - Politics | AP | Huffington Post Wires - Dec 23, 2008
Tennessee Guerilla Women: Senator Al Franken - Tennessee Guerilla Women - 22 hours ago
Majikthise : Schumer: Al Franken won the Senate race, seat him - Majikthise - 20 hours ago

[orleans]

19. lol. thanks. but can you just put the link to "google.com" there for me

(it's not that i want to read up on al or anything--i'm just unable to access the search engine as a whole!)

the adaware had me quarentine a ton of things, and that was all it said. i just did a norton scan. it just finished.

adaware wanted me to download updates, i think my norton firewall was stopping me. i tried "allowing" but i don't know if it went through.

i'm gonna try the adaware scan again.

you know, i went to yahoo.com and tried to do a search off of that, and i still got all this shopping shit up rather than links to websites like you gave me in this post such as alfranken.com

i'm going crazy. i'm a big google queen. i was trying to look up some shit for my mom and her meds and this is what happened.

please just link me with google.com and i'll see how that goes.

thanks so much.

[Muttocracy]

21. Oops - misunderstood.. here...

http://google.com

I think the quarantine should stop those files from being accessed, but you need to get rid of the "germs" - check the boxes and click Remove:


Might want to post in the Computer forum here - smart folks keep an eye on it.

[Muttocracy]

18. AdAware will tell you if it finds anything - what was the result? nt

[Lex]

20. Look at the top of Google. Are you on a Google "web" search or Google "shopping"

search? You can also Google search "images" "news" "maps" etc.

[orleans]

28. it's the web. i clicked on the shopping and it looks different. but all

the links on the google web are shopping links.

[Muttocracy]

22. article about a worm that sounds like what you have:

http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2005/0,4814,104714,00.html

Security vendor warns of Google-spoofing worm
Robert McMillan

September 16, 2005 (IDG News Service) Downloaders looking for a free "Star Wars" game may instead find themselves installing a new worm that gives them dodgy Google search results.

The worm, called P2Load.A, is being spread on P-to-P (peer-to-peer) programs like Shareaza and Imesh, masquerading as a free version of the Lucasfilm Ltd. game "Knights of the Old Republic II," said Forrest Clark, senior manager of consumer product marketing with antivirus vendor Panda Software SL.

P2Load.A first began spreading Wednesday and is most widely spread in the U.S. and Chile, Clark said.
When the software is installed, it makes changes to the computer's browser so that any user trying to access Google Inc.'s search engine is instead presented with a Google look-alike page, hosted on a server in Germany.

The page appears to be a working copy of the Google search engine that gives nearly identical search results. But the sponsored links are different, Clark said. "What they're doing is replacing all of the AdWords ads with fake ads, and they're selectively changing some of the search results," he said.

Even users who mistype the www.google.com address are redirected to the fake site, which also supports the same range of languages as Google.com. This redirection is achieved by modifying the hosts file in the infected computer's operating system, which is a kind of address book used to quickly connect the browser to Web sites.

By changing this file the worm's authors could spoof other popular Web sites, and possibly modify this attack for phishing, Clark said.

The P2Load.A worm seems to have been written to make money for its authors by increasing the number of visitors directed to the sites listed in the phony sponsored links results, Clark said.

Users infected with the worm will notice one other side effect: their browser's start page will be modified to display what appears to be a shopping site.

[orleans]

25. from that article:

P2Load.A affects Windows computers running either the Firefox or Internet Explorer browsers, according to Panda."

ok--that would be me. internet explorer. good article, from 2005?

(it never said how to get rid of it!)

okay, just did that adware and deleated all the tracking cookies. maybe now i'll reboot and see what happens. then i'll check the google link you gave me.

thanks.

[Muttocracy]

26. well, the key is whether that or a similar Worm is on your computer

But I say avoid Internet Explorer. I have a friend who does anti-virus management for an organization with tens of thousands of users, and he cautions to avoid IE, MS Outlook, etc. like the plague (pun intended)

[orleans]

27. ok--but here's a dumb question, however i really mean it...

how do i get online?

right now i click on my internet explorer icon and i go from there. i don't know how else to do it. what would i do?

[Muttocracy]

30. you can get online to the web via any web browser

A web browser is just a program that can download websites and translate the code into something sensible to read. So you can use Internet Explorer, or Firefox, or Safari (Mac only I think), or others. IE may be fine if you're careful what website you go to and the security setting in it are set properly, and if you have a good virus program running all the time (with updates happening regularly). My anti-virus can catch some of the worm/phish/etc. stuff - it's not as good at cleaning it up so I run AdAware once in a while.

Back to the browser, from any browser, you can download a different browser program, install it on your computer, and then use it instead. Firefox, if you're interested in it, is available here - http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ You might want to ask in the computer forum about pros and cons of Firefox.

By the way, I think if you have Windows you can't get rid of IE - it's used for updating Windows. Actually, make sure your Windows is up to date too - every so often they find a hole and patch it.

[orleans]

31. i also have modzilla/firefox and i'm getting the same thing using that one

if i jump to about the fifth google page then i can start seeing what i'm looking for. i just googled browsers--found this page:
http://www.consumersearch.com/web-browser-reviews
http://www.consumersearch.com/web-browser-reviews/flock-2-beta

sigh. thanks for all the time you've taken w/me.

[Muttocracy]

33. I suspect that worm is clever enough to go after both of them - was Google.com your home page?

it might have gone into the settings for your browsers and changed the home page links somehow? :shrug: I dunno. I hope AdAware can fix it - you might want to update Windows and your virus scanner, run the virus scanner too, and I think Windows has some type of security tool in it but can't remember what it's called.

[orleans]

35. no. google is not my homepage. and my fucking norton security

did a great job--not. ugh.

[SoCalDem]

38. First thing I do with a new computer, is delete Nortons

I have NEVER had a virus, and I download stuff all the time.. I just have a daily scan set with AVG..run adaware now and then & have the builtin windows thingie running..

[SoCalDem]

23. Someone told The google that you got money for Chris™as.. n/t

[SoCalDem]

24. Try this link

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=al+franken&btnG=Search

[orleans]

29. thanks--can you tell me if you're seeing what i am:

look past the first paragraph and look at the links. are they the same? "security-antivirus.com"? "monstermarketplace.com? maxim.com/girls??? WTF???
i'm sure you aren't seeing that on the first page results for al franken, but when i used your link that is what i see. oh dear...

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,220,000 for al franken. (0.08 seconds)
Search ResultsNews results for al franken
BBC News The new senator of Minnesota is Al Franken! Watch five great ... - 6 hours ago
Before Al Franken got into politics, he was a well-known satirist and comic that worked both on Air America radio and a little show called Saturday Night ...www.info.com - 1640 related articles »
Al Franken holds lead, but GOP vows to block seating as Minnesota ... - Chicago Tribune - 1616 related articles »

Al Franken for SenateDemocratic candidate in 2008 for US Senate from Minnesota. Find endorsements, events calendar, biography, blog, videos, issue positions and how to get ...
security-antivirus.com - 18k - Cached - Similar pages

Al Franken for SenateFranken '08 · Continue... Continue... Contact Us | Media | Privacy. Paid for by Al Franken for Senate.
www.monstermarketplace.com/ - 5k - Cached - Similar pages

More results from www.alfranken.com »
Franken on top in Minn. recount; Coleman to sue - Yahoo! NewsA Minnesota board on Monday certified results showing Democrat Al Franken winning the state's US Senate recount over Republican Norm Coleman, whose lawyer ...
www.toseeka.com - 82k - Cached - Similar pages

Video results for al franken
Al Franken: Where Rush Limbaugh's Facts Come From
1 min 10 sec
www.youtube.com

Ann Coulter and Al Franken at The Connecticut ...
1 min 11 sec
www.youtube.com


Al Franken - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaHe created characters such as self-help guru Stuart Smalley and routines such as proclaiming the 1980s to be the "Al Franken Decade". Franken was associated ...
www.heavy.com/ - 124k - Cached - Similar pages

Al Franken Web - A Fair and Balanced Fan PageAlFrankenWeb. A Completely Unofficial Al Franken Forum (click here for the official site) · Click here for AFW Chat · Contact the administrator ...
www.maxim.com/girls - 7k - Cached - Similar pages

Al Franken (I)Writer: When a Man Loves a Woman. Al Franken is best known for nearly two decades of work on "Saturday Night Live" (1975)... Visit IMDb for Photos, ...
www.imdb.com/name/nm0291253/ - 66k - Cached - Similar pages

Frankenlies.com :: The truth about the lies of Al Frankenfrankenlies.com is a must-see, research-based challenge to the book by Al Franken, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them ... The facts of Franken and his ...
www.frankenlies.com/ - 6k - Cached - Similar pages

Washington Wire - WSJ.com : Al Franken Camp Claims Four-Vote Lead ...Brad Haynes reports on Senate races. With the manual recount of Minnesota’s 2.9 million votes wrapping up, Democrat Al Franken‘s campaign claims to be ahead ...
blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/12/05/al-franken-camp-claims-four-vote-lead-in-recount/ - 232k - Cached - Similar pages

Al Franken Does Mick Jagger - Boing BoingJan 4, 2009 ... As news is coming out of Minnesota that the state Canvassing Board is ready to certify Al Franken as the winner of the very close senate ...
www.boingboing.net/2009/01/04/al-franken-does-mick.html - 23 hours ago - Similar pages

[SoCalDem]

32. Nope.. Mine does not have that one..

Have you tried AVG? or Zone alarm?

they have a free version you can try..

Do people send you email that has been forwarded?

I NEVER open a forwarded email..my friends know better than to send me those things ..:)

Good luck to you :hug:

[Muttocracy]

34. I'm paranoid about email attachments but the scary new thing is drive-by-downloading

where just by going on a web page you can get infected with stuff. Learned that the hard way a few months ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive-by_download

[orleans]

36. what is avg or zone alarm?

i have one friend that forwards emails to me. i opened it and read it earlier. if she wasn't home when she sent it (and i didn't notice) then she sent it from a security company--if that was the source of my problem it would be rather ironic.

do you have links for avg or zone alarm (i could go there directly, rather than going through that slosh on "google" lol!) thanks.

[SoCalDem]

37. here are the links

http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/catalog/products/zonealarm_free_firewall.jsp?dc=12bms&ctry=US&lang=en

http://www.avg-download-free.org/

[Nye Bevan]

39. You can also try System Restore if you are running Windows

If you know you were OK a couple of days ago just go back and restore your system to that point. It might be easier than removing your worm. If this works then install AVG to prevent future problems.

[SoCalDem]

40. Did you get it figured out & fixed yet?

:shrug: