![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneI've noticed that I've had slightly odd behavior for a couple of weeks: I'd type in the url for a site that I've visited before, and I'd get a message saying that access to that site had been blocked by an add-in!
Very odd.
Tonight, I was looking for some Grateful Dead midi files. Open up Google, type in 'Grateful Dead midi file' and hit enter. And I happened to notice that the tab bar said MaxAsk.com! Now, the interesting thing is that the results looked fairly reasonable, and had the Google logo, but that's easy enough to impersonate.
Doing a little digging in a different, very rarely used browser, revealed that MaxAsk is a browser hijacker! This could explain trouble accessing web sites. I checked the add-ins that I had which were rather few: an ad blocker, and one that I didn't remember loading. I removed it, and Google seemed to be responding normally.
Very weird. And, of course, the big question is: how did it get installed!
I'm going to have to do some cleaning and see if there are any traces of any other problems lurking on this box.
Very odd.
Tonight, I was looking for some Grateful Dead midi files. Open up Google, type in 'Grateful Dead midi file' and hit enter. And I happened to notice that the tab bar said MaxAsk.com! Now, the interesting thing is that the results looked fairly reasonable, and had the Google logo, but that's easy enough to impersonate.
Doing a little digging in a different, very rarely used browser, revealed that MaxAsk is a browser hijacker! This could explain trouble accessing web sites. I checked the add-ins that I had which were rather few: an ad blocker, and one that I didn't remember loading. I removed it, and Google seemed to be responding normally.
Very weird. And, of course, the big question is: how did it get installed!
I'm going to have to do some cleaning and see if there are any traces of any other problems lurking on this box.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-31 12:15 am (UTC)