This is a quick article on “How to remove the Firefox Popup Virus”. I hope this gets indexed in Google and helps someone. I usually tend to post things when I have a problem, do a search, and didn’t exactly find the answer right away.
Do I have a Browser Virus?
I mainly use Ubuntu Linux, but I do have Windows dual boot on my laptop, and a Windows 7 desktop for my son. We don’t have Norton Internet Security or McAfee installed on either computer. Mainly because it slows systems down, and is not necessary in our house – we’re all technically minded and haven’t had an infection in 10 years.
Over the last month something weird has happened – when we visit web sites another tab will open via popup in Firefox with some type of ad, usually with video and sound – and it seems to be triggered by certain keywords. Things like “ebay”, “amazon”, “spyware”, and other trigger keywords. You’ll go to shut down the ad tab and you always get the javascript prompt “are you sure you want to do that”.
At first I thought this was a bad “addon” or toolbar that was installed to Firefox. We do have one little one in the house, and he doesn’t yet know the difference between ads and content. There are some really sneaky, shady (and slimy) marketers that put out both toolbars and addons that “enhance” your web pages with popups, ads, and then can even contextually link content on a web page to spam sites and sales pages. Instead of “infecting” your computer, they just convince you to click and install a toolbar or Firefox Addon under the guise of “providing incredible deals” or “helping your surf faster”, or some other garbage. So if you think you have some kind of redirect or popup virus – the first thing you can check is whether you have any toolbars or addons installed in Firefox under “Tools->Addons”. Remove all addons that you don’t need, or don’t know what they are, and restart Firefox.
It’s not a Firefox Addon or Toolbar – Am I Infected?
The next thing I did was visit Housecall.Trendmicro.com. I’m not in love with Trend Micro security, but they have an online scanner you can use without installing anything. It works just as good as Norton or McAfee. I let it run, and it didn’t find any virus, trojan, rootkit, malware, spyware, adware, or other kind of infection – NOTHING!
Now I was stumped, I fully expected it to turn up something. I googled, and I googled, and I googled some more. It turns out that there are some widespread infections with the Firefox browser – and they’re all for popups or redirects. McAfee and Norton can’t find them, and they’re NOT installed through an addon or Toolbar.
The Firefox Browser Redirect Popup Virus
This Firefox browser redirect popup virus infection is usually one of the following:
– an infected Firefox profile
– an infected Firefox “hosts” file
– an infected Firefox browser cache
How do you get rid of the Firefox popup redirect virus? For me, the fix was as simple as pie. It turns out that I had an infected profile, and this is what fixed it:
1. You start Firefox in “SAFE Mode”
Look in your start menu as in the image above for the Firefox safe mode link – and click it.
2. Reset EVERYTHING in Firefox
Then check all the boxes and restart Firefox. This will dump the cache, all settings, reset the profile – and adds are (like me) once the browser is restarted your redirection and popup infection in Firefox will go away.
If you still have problems, most likely your hosts file is infected, google how to remove it, install a fresh one, and restart your computer.
