Googol is getting really annoying

[DutchMarco]

Am I the only one who experiences this? I search, get a neat, perfectly normal page with results, when I  li k a link, I get taken to , for instance, http://www.satellitedirect.com/?hop=ppccrash while the link is listed in google's results shown as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripstop . This happens both on a laptop and desktop (using Firefox 5, FWIW). If I copy and paste the link I do get to the desired site.
Sample of the search result (I manually added the red lines and ?):

[Khris]

You can see where a link is going to lead in the status bar if you hover the mouse over it.
If hovering shows the correct link but clicking it doesn't get you there then I guess some sort of malware is involved.

As for google, both .de and .com get me the wikipedia entry as first result and clicking it works fine.

[Wyz]

I tried Ripstop in google and it takes me to the right page. This sounds very much like spyware/viruses actually. I've seen a similar problem where links were changed to refer to malicious sites. Time to run the virus scanner I guess.

[DutchMarco]

Harumpf I have both Symantec AV and Sygate Firewall, I'd hoped (and expected) they would've helped prevent something like this. Would it help if I removed Firefox and reinstalled? Now, how would that Malware have gotten installed? Because I don't recalll having done anything that could've let it in.
Thanks for the tip, anyway.
Running full scan now, w updated virus defs.

[monkey0506]

Symantec/Norton is worthless. Get a real antivirus program. I recommend avast!. A lot of people have success with AVG, but I've experienced memory leaks from that program before. It's actually quite easy for these malware programs to sneak themselves into areas that web users would normally consider "safe", and they are designed to circumnavigate existing antivirus software.

Anyway, if you're experiencing these problems, I'd actually highly recommend you get yourself straight over to the Spyware Hell forum on the Piriform website (developers of such incredible tools as CCleaner and Recuva). Rorschach over there helped me out a couple years back in cleaning up my mom's computer which had gotten some viruses (she was using Norton when she got infected..11+ general "malware" programs, 30+ spyware programs, and various Trojans, rootkits, etc. ).

Be sure you read their "BEFORE YOU POST" thread and follow the instructions therein exactly, and then post your thread and follow the instructions given to you exactly. Don't follow other people's instructions from their threads, only the instructions given you in your own thread.

Trust me, it's well worth your time. Even if you're feeling confident that it will be handled by your current prevention methods, the earlier on you catch an issue like this, the easier it's going to be to get rid of it..and you've already experienced some of the early symptoms.

[m0ds]

Did you know Mr Marco, Google have currently suspended their real time search? Meaning, if you were to search for an event in real time, for example, say there is an earthquake happening now - you might happen to see results from Twitter posted in the last few minutes from witnesses near the scene, is now turned off. Apparently because they need to implement it into Google+. Other search engines, over the past year or so, have slowly been turning off their real time searches.

That is all.  8)

[monkey0506]

Mark that's a bit misleading in that it only applies to certain social networking sites, such as Twitter specifically. And implementing Google+ results into their realtime search isn't the only reason that they've currently suspended that service. They had an agreement with Twitter that is now over, and they no longer have the same access to live "tweets" that they previously did. Twitter could have issued a revised agreement prior to the expiration of the existing one, but they didn't. So the fault at least partially lies with Twitter themselves, as they were the primary source of the feature.

Sauce

[m0ds]

LOL I see sir. Still, the internet and the real world collapsing in on themselves yet again! Gaaaaaay Oceanspirit Dennissssss  

[monkey0506]

It's now politically incorrect to say, "That's so gay." The preferred way of saying the same thing is now, "That's so Oceanspirit Dennis."

[Khris]

Yup, avast! and Malwarebytes do the trick for me. Superantispyware is bloated, Spybot left me hanging one time, so I don't recommend those anymore.

First order of business is always hijackthis though. You can let analyze the logfile here: http://www.hijackthis.de/en

[Anian]

And after you clean the pc, instal a plugin for Firefox called NoScript, it saves lives...well saves something. It basically blocks evertyhing that might load in the background of the site (and lets you choose what you want to actually see) it'll stop 99.9% of pop-ups and really a lot of nasty stuff. After a few days of setting up (so you make adjustments for sites you visit frequently), you'll be a happier person, trust me.
It takes a day or so to get used to it, but in the long run it'll save you a lot of virus and mallware battles.

[arj0n]

First order of business is always hijackthis though. You can let analyze the logfile here: http://www.hijackthis.de/en

Hijackthis (v2.0.4 or v2.0.5 (Beta) or the classic v1.99.1) indeed, and the report is easy to check by yourself.

[Sam.]

Seconded to Hijack this, after suffering malware problems on my old laptop it was the only thing that would solve the problem.

[R4L]

While you're at it, look up the Rogue Removal Kit. It's a kit with many utilities to search for viruses and restore registry entries and fix windows errors made by viruses. That's the author's homepage.

My laptop running Win 7 got the TDSS virus a few months ago, and using google or even the regular address bar on firefox would immediately re-direct me to some website; possibly one full of viruses.

It also shut down my AVG and Windows Firewall, wouldn't let me run disk defrag, or CCleaner, or Spybot. So I had to go on another computer and download this kit to my flash drive then install it on the lappy and then I ran the programs on it. I had no problems after a day's work.

The kit contains a version of Hitman Pro, PrevX, MalwareBytes, ComboFix, a winsock fix, and others to help get rid of most viruses and TDSS.

Here's the direct link to the zip file.

Just thought I could help.  

[DutchMarco]

Right,

So I restored Windoze to the situation of over a month ago, but now my google results aren't hijacked by bidvertiser, but by groupon And I've found this:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/212500/groupon_to_google_no_thanks.html
Google has bought up several businesss I have listed in my C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts-file, referring them to 127.0.0.1 (effectively blocking access to them - that's how much I dislike them.): Groupon and DoubleClick. So this google is on it's way to becoming my most despised company in internet history (they have competition to that title, but they're busy buying up that competition. Surely not because they want to eliminate these companies? That'd be too good to be true)

[monkey0506]

I don't understand people who hate Google. Not just people who dislike Google and choose not to use it, but these internet vigilantes who are so far opposed to all things Google that not only do they not use it, but they take it upon themselves to ensure that everybody and their brother is made aware of just how much they hate Google.

Very rarely can they ever, in my opinion, produce adequate reasoning for said hatred. "Google's evil," I've quite literally heard someone say. Why? "They just are." No explanation or qualification, I'm just expected to take their word for it. Sorry, but frankly that doesn't work for me.

With regard to Google's purchase of other companies my response is simply this: they are a business. I don't care if you don't like advertisements in your web pages or how much you hate pop-ups. There's many a way of dealing with those "problems", and single-handedly trying to bring down Google isn't one of them. Even if Google disappeared, other companies would arise. The fact of the matter is that for every one person who is intelligent enough not to click on an advertisement they could care less about, there are five more waiting in the midst with their trigger-happy mouse-clicking fingers ready.

Google is primarily an information-based company, providing their users/consumers with whatever information they might request. Of course that largely ties into the search engine portion of what Google is today, but with Gmail, Google Docs, Google Voice, the Android OS, and so many other services Google is offering now, the types, and sources, of information Google can provide has come a long way from a simple search engine.

So, knowing what type of information their userbase wants is a role which has become entirely essential to Google's success as a business. Being able to directly collect data regarding what type of information people are looking for, without having to involve a third-party is a rather keen way of keeping themselves up-to-date, and in business. Google's purchase of advertising companies, amongst other companies, is a rather logical step from a business standpoint.

However, even if Google has ownership in or of these companies, it does not make good business sense for them to forcibly prevent you from obtaining the information you want in favor of whatever totally unrelated information they may choose to force upon you. In short what I'm getting at here is that this isn't a Google problem, it's a your computer problem. Just because one or more detection methods might fail to diagnose or locate the problem does not make it not a your computer problem. That's why I suggested the Piriform forums. These viruses and other malware are designed to invisibly circumnavigate anything you may do to prevent, detect, or remove them. There is something wrong with your computer, and it's not going to fix itself.

[voh]

+1 on monkey's post.

[R4L]

+1 on monkey's post.

I'll add another +1 to that.

That's why I linked him the kit I was talking about in my post. It comes with more than enough tools to find his problem.