Some kind of virus has gotten into my browser that will cause it to go automatically to a new, unwanted webpage after a few seconds.

Question

Sometimes when I click on a link, the browser will go to that page for about a second and then will automatically go to a new (unwanted) webpage. When I use Firefox's "go back" button, a splash screen will appear asking me if I really want to leave that page. Sometimes it will take me back and stay and at others it will go revert to the new, unwanted page. The unwanted page is different each time and generally look to be real pages but random. Also, sometimes when I click a link, Firefox opens a second browser window with a random page. This happens several times throughout the day. It will happen both with some of my standard bookmarks that I use all the time and also with new urls. Most of the time it seems to be random but does happen more with some links than others. Is this a new virus?

Answer 1

Do a malware check with some malware scan programs.<br />
You need to scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.<br />
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of the database before doing a scan.<br />
* http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
* http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware
* 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
* http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php - Ad-Aware Free
See also "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked and [[Searches are redirected to another site]]