Tabs open sometimes to different sites when I don't do anything; why?
Sometimes I will open a new tab to go to my Yahoo! Mail or another website, and a random tab will open to some kind of link, and sometimes it will show a website and sometimes it's just blank. I'm not saying I'm a whiz at this, but I've been around computers since the early 90s when I was in 1st Grade (maybe even before), so I'm computer savvy and know to avoid pop-ups and things like that. I've not downloaded anything to cause this to happen. Also, sometimes when I Google something and go to the link, it will redirect me elsewhere, and a few times I've gotten a "warning: this page is..." so and so and Firefox would like me to not open it; mostly it's legit websites and things. I also, just this morning, got a "virus" notification from Microsoft Essentials, but I knew better and quickly exited the tab on that! I suppose that's it. Thank you.
All Replies (2)
Do a malware check with some malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
You need to scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.
- http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
- http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware
- http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx - Microsoft Safety Scanner
- http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Windows Defender: Home Page
- http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Spybot Search & Destroy
You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.
See also:
- "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked
This seems like a lot to download just for this problem, but I SO want it fixed, so I'm doing it!