This has happened to me twice now. Anyone else having this problem? Any logical reason why this is going on?
The logical explanation is that you’re clicking on them without realizing it.
No, that’s a logical explanation. Another is the possibility of some sort of malware or browser hijacker. Round up the usual suspects with updated Adaware and/or Spybot or whatever flavor of spyware sweeper you prefer.
I’ve had this happen to me once that I can recall. It happened immediately after replying to a post and just making a random left-click on the mouse. It seemed that for some reason, the leftmost ad had “focus,” after my reply was displayed. Lemme try it again after this submission goes thru.
Nope. Didn’t happen this time. Perhaps I did actually have the cursor over the add when it happened.
Updated and ran Spybot. It found one thing, WWWCoolWeb or something. Weird, that… My husband is pretty obsessive about keeping things up to date & he just did it yesterday I think.
Anyway, thanks for the help. We’ll see if it happens again.
CoolWebSearch is one of the nastiest critters on the net. Do make sure that you’ve removed all traces of it from your system, the darn thing comes in hundreds of variants, some of them very difficult to get rid of.
Read the CoolWebSearch Chronicles which gives details of the beast in many of its incarnations, with instructions on how to nuke it.
Probably Cool Web Search, one of the worst.
If you find more links on a page than should be – especially a page or message you are quite familiar with, like one you created yourself – you may have been infected with malware that adds its own links by rewriting the HTML code on the fly. Bastards, but the usual diagnostics should catch it.
OH GREAT! Obviously I haven’t been paying attention to the new bad stuff floating around out there. As I said, hubby does all the dirty work on this thing. Do you recommend CWShredder?
DAMMIT ALL TO HELLLLLL!
I used to, but not long ago the word on the street was that program was not being updated by its creator. Now I hear it is. So someone more up to date than I am would have to settle this.
Check out the sticky we have in the GQ forum. It’s a wealth of info:
Trend Micro is the new owner of CWshredder, and they issued the latest update on 9/21.
CoolWeb is a really nasty bastard. The (long string of pit worthy insults) guys behind it are constantly putting out new mutated versions of the damn thing so it’s virtually impossible to find a good utility or set of instructions that will permenantly kill the thing off. The fastest and easiest way to get rid of the damn thing may be to wipe the disk and start over.
I was running IE for my browser and Norton for my antivirus. I switched over to Firefox and AVG after the disk wipe and haven’t had a virus since. YMMV.
NOOOOO!!! Please tell me I don’t have to do that. I HATE starting over.
I use Firefox as my browser and have Norton for AV. I haven’t used IE in a very very long time. The weird thing: when I ran Spybot & came up with CoolWebShit, I clicked for further details & it said something about it being for IE.
I downloaded CWShredder, ran a scan and it came clean. So… How do I know I’m ok?
Reboot your computer and see if it comes back. If it doesn’t, you’re good. If it does, wipe the disk and start over. It’s the easier way out, in my experience (and yes, I know how painful wiping the disk is).
BTW, I just posted this in another google ads thread, but the “clickable” spot on the hurricane relief ad is much larger than you expect. I have repeatedly ended up at the hurricane relief web site without meaning to because I thought the big grey ad box was mostly benign when clicked on. Not so. The whole thing is one big hyperlink. Very annoying.
The google ads look unobtrusive, but I’m sure they’ll try their best to annoy us into thinking of them just as fondly as we think of the old 468x60 ads that were once ubiquitous.
I rebooted and ran Spybot again. I’m in the clear as far as it’s concerned. If there’s anything else I should do to be sure, let me know.
Thanks for helping, everyone. I appreciate it.