Annoying links in our text

[Eric Blumensaadt]

BPL, Puleeeezzze get rid of those highlighted links you insert in the text of our posts. VERY annoying just to see them after having clicked on a few out of curiosity.

Aaaarrrrrggghhh! (And that's the mildest expression I can post.)

UPDATE: I followed Randy's advice & found it was a program & I uninstalled it. How it got in in the first place is a mystery.
I expected backpacking advice here but computer advice? Glad we have some folks here far more computer savvy than me. Thanks all for your concern.

[EndoftheTrail]

Eric:

Don't really understand. Can you point to an example?

[Bob Gross]

The comment may have been intended for the Forum Admin section.

–B.G.–

[Roger Caffin]

Huh???
Example needed.

cheers

[Ken Thompson]

Get over it and don't click on them. Easy.

Just like not reading some peoples posts.

I have found some of those links useful.

[Travis Leanna]

I'm a bit confused myself.

[EndoftheTrail]

I don't see any links embedded in user texts. Maybe get a new browser (or browser extension)??

[Cayenne Redmonk]

???

I have no idea what annoying links are being inserted. Can anyone who can see them have an example ?

[tim hower]

Could the OP possibly have a virus or malware installed on his system doing this?

Eric B can you take a screenshot of what it is that is irritating you?

[Roger Caffin]

> Could the OP possibly have a virus or malware installed on his system doing this?
Very possible!

cheers

[Sam Haraldson]

Please post a screen shot of this. I am not aware of what links you are speaking of.

[Pepe LP]

Do the links tell you to do anything? Are you hearing voices too? Just kidding. :)

[Eric Blumensaadt]

You guys are just jealous because you don't see the links ( and because the voices only talk to me… :)

Seriously, ONLY on this site do I get blue highlighted words in my posts and all other posts that, when you click on them lesd you to a LIST of sites.

EX. the word "at" is highlighted in blue (and underlined with dots) and when I click on it I get "AT&T" and other items beginning with "at".

Is this some strange thing on my computer only? Why is it only on BPL posts??
BTW, The links page says "Surf Canyon". Is this some virus or malware on my comnputer?

(Yeah, I know,even paranoids have enemies.)

[EndoftheTrail]

Eric:

That is odd. Definitely sounds like a malware on your computer! I would give it a check if I were you. Who knows what else it is doing??

[Nick Gatel]

Eric,

We thought YOU had a virus. But it is apparent your COMPUTER is infected with Malware or similar. Do an Internet search for Adaware and Spybot. They are free. Download and run them. The links will probably go away. But maybe not the voices :)

[Travis Leanna]

Wait…what's wrong with hearing voices?

[Nick Gatel]

Wait…what's wrong with hearing voices?

Nothing. But Adaware and Spybot will not eliminate them.

[Eric Blumensaadt]

I'll get a more computer knowledgeable person to get the best anti-spyware on it tomorrow.
I don't understand why my McAfee anti-virus doesn't have something like Adaware on it. My previous Norton Utilities had it.

Sorry for jumping the gun and blaming BPL for this. That just shows that I'm only semi-literate with computers. Ya gotta remember, when I was in college in the '60s computers were only owned by large businesses and had key-punched cards. I didn't grow up with a laptop.

[Bob Gross]

"Ya gotta remember, when I was in college in the '60s computers were only owned by large businesses and had key-punched cards."

I have a large stack of keypunch cards right here.

I agree with the others. It smells like some kind of malware, virus, browser corruption, etc. It shouldn't be impossible to clean out.

Sometimes crap like that sneaks into your computer before McAfee can do anything about it.

–B.G.–

[Scott Truong]

… haha.. just kidding. Don't flame me.

Seriously, I love my Macbook. I really really disliked computers when I had used Windows. Not sure if they've improved over the last couple of years, but my Windows based systems always invariably slowed down after 6 months of use for some reason.

Now, knock on wood, no antivirus programs, no defraging, no sluggishness despite filling my hard-drive with all kinds of torrent files.

And if you ever have a mac related question, seems all one has to do is google. There seems to be a lot less commercial related info. to sift through to get an answer vs Windows… smaller community perhaps?

[Randy Nelson]

Eric, Try this to uninstall Surf Canyon. It's a browser extension related to searching. It sounds more like it can't find or correctly interpet the link so it's going into search mode. What OS and browser are you using? I can see if I can duplicate it. I don't think it's a virus or malware. You'd be seeing more trouble than just this.

Q: How do I uninstall the browser extension?
A: If you are using Firefox, open Firefox and select "Tools" from the top menu. Select "Add-ons" and then click the "uninstall" button next to Surf Canyon. The browser extension will be removed the next time you restart Firefox. If you are using Internet Explorer, open the Windows "Control Panel" and select "Add or Remove Programs". Find "Surf Canyon" and click "remove" or "uninstall". If you are using Chrome, click the "Customize and control Google Chrome" wrench icon in the upper right-hand corner, select "Extensions," and click "Uninstall" next to Surf Canyon.

[Roger Caffin]

> I have a large stack of keypunch cards right here.
Chuckle.
I still have about 2' (two feet) of unused IBM punch cards in a punch-card filing drawer. Nice card stock. Used to make good darts for a lecture theatre.

Cheers

[CW]

"smaller community perhaps"

That sums it up well. It's not worth it for the devious to create viruses, etc. for Macs if they want to maximize the damage potential.

Macs do have their own issues though. Ex. My brother's previous generation Macbook needs an OS upgrade to work with an iPhone 4. It also has a brown wrist rest due to heat damaging the white finish.

Either choice is a compromise of some sort.

[John Donewar]

Eric,

+1 for what Randy is suggesting to solve your problem.

I had a similar problem that kept redirecting my browser to a "search engine" called Gala. It also simply gave me a list of sites and no real results.

What I did to get rid of this annoyance was to download and run Spybot. Even after doing this I noticed that if I looked at "all programs" after clicking on start there was still some leftovers to remove. I also did as Randy suggests for IE as that was the browser that I was using at the time. This finally cleared up my computer's problem.

My oldest son is my resident computer guru who led me through all of these steps. From what I was able to understand of his explanation what I was experiencing was a "redirect" that got into my system because my of clicking on the "wrong" button when a window that looked like Windows popped up warning me that my computer was infected.

I was advised that if I see this window again to do nothing and simply close the browser. What caused most of my problem was believing that it was truly Windows based and following the warning's suggestion of how to rid my computer of its "immenent danger". :-(

I also have since switched to Google Chrome for my browser. It may not be immune but as Scott said,

" There seems to be a lot less commercial related info. to sift through to get an answer vs Windows… smaller community perhaps?"

I'm hoping that the smaller community aspect of GC vesus IE helps me avoid future problems.

Good luck.

Party On,

Newton

[Eric Blumensaadt]

Randy, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

I did uninstall SurfCanyon. I shudda looked in programs when this first appeared.

Live & learn.

[Author]

Posts