Be careful out there

One day, as I was using Google to look up stuff, I noticed that sometimes when I clicked on one of the search results I was taken to a strange looking site that acted as if it had search results of its own about the subject I'd just searched for. Except, the results it had were either bogus (leading to another search site), poor (nothing to do with the subject) or to sites I knew I didn't want to visit. The more I searched, the more often I got to one of a number of false search sites.

I decided to see if this was a common problem and typed "google search redirect" in Google and came up with a lot of entries about a virus with those characteristics. Of course, I couldn't go to any of the sites the results pointed to because I'd end up at one of the false search sites. So, I decided to switch to Bing for my searching. That worked once. Then I started to get the bad searches there, too. Next I tried using a different browser (I normally use Firefox) but that didn't help, either. I was getting desperate and went to my wife's computer to see if something was wrong with searches on the Internet in general. Everything worked on her computer so I finally realized that I'd gotten a virus on my computer. I disconnected from our home network in case it could spread that way.

Using the links I found on Cindy's computer, I researched what might be wrong with my computer. What I found was scary. Many links referred to a rootkit virus that acted like what I was seeing. But nothing I tried from those links seemed to work. I even found two highly regarded anti-virus companies that offered free programs to fix this problem but neither of those found the specific rootkit that the sites mentioned.

This went of for over a week and things were getting worse. Pop-up dialogs were randomly appearing on my screen (even when I wasn't running my Web browser) and it was taking a long time to shut down and start up my computer. Some of my programs were not running and others were acting strangely. As I tried each method to defeat this virus, I found that it would work for a few minutes and then the old behavior would return. It was not only frustrating, it added more time to the job of trying to fix the problem - I couldn't just try each method, I had to try using a few searches before I could say that the problem hadn't been fixed after all.

One of the things I first tried to fix the problem was to use Windows System Restore. This allows you to restore the system files on your computer to their state at an earlier time. But when I tried that, it failed to run correctly. Just getting my computer back to running condition after that failure took a few days. So, as I got more desperate, I realized I might have to start from scratch and reformat my entire hard disk and reload the operating system. Before I did that, though, I needed to make copies of all my personal files including pictures from my camera, files I needed for work, information I'd saved about our network set-up and a list of the programs I'd installed on my computer since I bought it. That took another day and filled up two DVDs. Finally, I felt I was ready to start the process of wiping my computer clean.

On my Dell computer, there is a separate section of the disk that is protected and allows you to restore the computer to the way it was when you first bought it. I started the program and it complained that I needed to start this process from power-up. I followed those directions and was about to hit the "OK" button to start the process when I had one more thought - what if I had tried to use Windows System Restore from a state that was too close to the start of the problem? Maybe the virus had corrupted the Restore Point I had tried to use. Maybe I just had to use an older Restore Point. I stopped the wiping procedure and tried, in desperation, using a Restore Point from a month before I started noticing the problems. The first good news was that the System Restore worked! Where my earlier attempt had locked up and wouldn't even finish its own process, this one at least finished and said it was successful. Was I just being teased by this insidious problem? I tried a few searches and clicked on the resulting links. They took me where they said they would! It seemed like the problem was fixed.

I couldn't relax for days after this. Every time I'd search for something, I'd expect to be sent to one of the bogus search sites. But after two or three days of no problems, I assumed I was going to be OK. Now, I'm very careful about what I click on in the search results. I believe my problem was brought on by searching for information about a television show I liked and one of the links pointing to a site about one of the actors on that show. But I'm not sure. It could have been any of the hundreds of searches I do every day. I just don't click on links without thinking about them anymore.

I know you're saying that I probably didn't have an anti-virus program running on my computer but that is incorrect. I have a very good anti-virus program running and I never turn it off. It runs with maximum protection settings. The customer support people at the anti-virus company attempted to help me get rid of this virus but none of their suggestions worked, either. Although my repeated scans of my computer showed a number of problems, removing those problems didn't fix my big problem. Only the System Restore solved the problem. And I'll never look at a search result the same.