Yes, it is correct that you should have assumed the addware you were getting from the things you were downloading was behind your problems and not a message board that you’re protected from by the AdBlock you just admitted to using.
Again, that program had a download date from three or four weeks ago on it and the contextual ads started showing up yesterday. Given the evidence I had, I made a guess. It was wrong, but it wasn’t so insane that it should amuse you.
Ok, lesson learned. It’s not weird that it started showing up yesterday: the bad guys were trying to cover their tracks. Malware isn’t written by amateurs anymore: I understand that some of this stuff contains high quality social and software engineering. Caveat User.
Hey (to the best of your knowledge) at least you are not infected by ZeuS.
Them malware dudes sure are devious, eh? All they have to do to throw you off the scent is wait a few weeks to activate the payload.
You don’t say how you “turned it off,” but you might want to do more than that. Malware like that doesn’t go gently into the night without a protest, and may require some remedial efforts to completely remove.
Free anti-virus programs are worth twice what you pay for them.
Use Web Of Trust (https://www.mywot.com) as another in your arsenal of tools to determine whether something on the web is safe for you to view. It’s not foolproof as it’s crowd-sourced, but it’s valuable nonetheless. The website associated with the problematic software in this case is marked as disreputable.