Advertisements in Firefox's Bottom Bar

[LawMonkey]

In the last couple of days, I've started noticing ads showing up in Firefox's bottom bar. They seem to be associated with Google searches executed from the built-in search box (the one next to the address bar). For example, just now I searched for "vagabond opera" so that I could watch a few of their videos. Down in the bottom bar, there's now a blue link for "Vagabond Opera at Amazon." Yesterday, a search for (IIRC) "beard trimmers" gave rise to a link for "Sears Trimmers" of the lawn rather than beard variety.

The link persists after I've closed the tab with the search, and shows up across all tabs. A new window won't have it--though I did just do a search on "beard trimmers" in a new window, and instead of getting the Sears ad in the bottom bar, I got the Vagabond Opera ad.

Does anybody know anything about this? I've tried Google and had no luck. I find the ads rather annoying, more because they're showing up in a bit of my browser that I have no control over than because they're especially intrusive. (Also, they won't go away short of closing the window.) I'm running Firefox 3.5 on OS X 10.5.7, if it's of any importance--I'm not sure if the same thing happens over on Windows.

ETA: Just restarted Firefox to get the ad to go away. While the ad went away, the Google logo didn't load on my home page (www.google.com). I did a refresh: the logo showed up, but so did the ad--"Vagabond Opera at Amazon." Now I'm wondering if this might be my own special problem with some sort of disreputable software that's snuck in here...

[Philster]

Even Firefox can get hijacked. The search redirect is a classic example.

[RealityChuck]

I'd do a scan with Malwarebytes (http://malwarebytes.org). That finds most simple problems.

[LawMonkey]

Know of anything to handle malware for the mac? Malwarebytes seems to be windows only.

[GuanoLad]

Know of anything to handle malware for the mac?A-HA! I shall file that information away for future use.

[RealityChuck]

Macs don't get malware -- at least, they haven't so far. But clearly something like this could use Firefox as a way into a Mac, and there are no tools to clean it. About the only free antivirus for the mac is Clam-AV, but I doubt it will be much good.

Sooner or later, someone is going to devise malware that runs on the Mac, and things will get ugly. (Macs aren't any more secure than PCs -- possibly even less so -- but they are hardly ever targeted for malware. One day that will change.)

[Dewey Finn]

Which Add-ons did you install in Firefox?

[Larry Mudd]

Macs don't get malware -- at least, they haven't so far.Believe it or not, some coders (http://www.sophos.com/blogs/sophoslabs/v/post/4811) do set out to target that fraction of less than 3% of the total market. Maybe it's ideological.

[LawMonkey]

I've got Firefox set up with AdBlock Plus, CacheViewer, DownThemAll!, Firefox PDF Plugin for Mac OS X, Google Reader Notifier, and URL Fixer. Of those, only ABP and the PDF plugin were added recently--the others I've had since long before I noticed this. On the other hand, I only started using FF as my "regular browser" recently; my preference has generally been for Safari because it offers more screen real estate for the webpages themselves.

At the end of the day, it's not an urgent problem if all it's doing is serving me ads in the bottom bar of Firefox--I'm using Safari again for now, and had only drifted over to FF because I was unsatisfied with Safari Adblock's performance at times. I am a bit concerned about what else it might be doing, though...

[IAmNotSpartacus]

Macs don't get malware -- at least, they haven't so far.
Cite?

[Dewey Finn]

When you say that the ads appear in the "bottom bar", do you mean the Firefox status bar? Because you can turn off display of it from the View menu. If you do so, do the ads no longer appear? (I'm slightly curious as I've never heard of such a thing happening.)

[LawMonkey]

I didn't realize it had a specific name--but yes, it's the status bar. Googling for 'ads firefox status bar' led me to this blog post (http://www.bernzilla.com/2009/07/14/adware-in-my-firefox-status-bar/) describing the problem, including a picture of the offending blue link.

The discussion thread indicates that the Firefox Folks may be looking into it, and suggests that it may(?) be associated with Google Reader Notifier. I've had that for years and never had trouble--but then, there may have been an update installed recently. I tend to just approve and forget when it asks.

ETA: Thanks for the heads up on ditching the status bar. That would free up a bit of real estate in any event.

[HorseloverFat]

Bugzilla report:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=504050