BPpark
join:2002-03-02
Silver Spring, MD
| When does redirecting = hijacking?
I'm having an odd problem with the links produced by Yahoo and Google searches. They often take me to odd places, often shopping, search or service sites. I use IE 7 on WinXP behind a router using Comcast, with Zone Alarm, Norton and Adaware.
Norton says I'm clean. Adaware found a few baddies and I got rid of them. Thinking this was a DNS issue and/or an IE issue, I downloaded the Firefox installer, emptied my Internet cache, changed DNS servers, rebooted, changed them back, and then istalled Firefox.
Firefix behaved. So did IE. But after a few hours, the problem is back.
I don't believe I'm hijacked because my default home page hasn't changed and when I type something into the URL window on either browser, I go where I intend to go. But if I do a Yahoo or Google search on certain key words (I've been using Starwood, Maytag, Pella and Wyoming as tests) and I click on the links that the search engines provide, I'll get redirected to Shopzilla, or some other crazy place. If I clear the browser window and type in the URL that the link is supposed to represent, the browser will behave.
This does not happen with all links in Yahoo or Google search results, only some of them.
I don't know a lot about corrupted host files or poisoned DNS caches, but I've heard of them, and this doesn't quite sound like them. But: What DOES this sound like? |
