Why do I get redirected to an online store?

December 26, 2001 5:04 PM

Everytime I go to Metafilter's main face, after a minute of reading I get redirected to a different online store. The last one was ThinkGeek. Three times this happend, and then my system froze. I'm using IE 5.1 and Windows 98. This isn't what normally happens, and I'm confused as to why.
posted by FunkyHelix to Bugs at 5:04 PM (12 comments total)

And it stopped, so nevermind. How strange.
posted by FunkyHelix at 5:09 PM on December 26, 2001

I jumped the gun. That last time I was sent to the SciFi channel's website.
posted by FunkyHelix at 5:28 PM on December 26, 2001

you're running windows i take it. have you run the current version of adaware on your system? sounds like spyware is having some fun with you.
posted by boogah at 5:43 PM on December 26, 2001

You're right. Thanks.
posted by FunkyHelix at 6:22 PM on December 26, 2001

Boogah, thanks for the Ad-Aware link. I finally gave it a go and was horrified at the amount of vermin components that had leeched onto my system.

Still didn't solve my 404 page problem though. I've tried malphigian's and suzanne's suggestions but to no avail.
posted by dlewis at 4:50 AM on December 27, 2001

Matt blocked my IP at work because a coworker of mine trolled a while back. Ever time I or another one of my other coworkers (the non-trolling, but definitely snarky type) tried to log in, we were redirected to plastic.com. We beat the troll with a roll of quarters, and asked Matt to let us back in. Not sure if it was related or not, but hey.
posted by adampsyche at 7:40 AM on December 27, 2001

The Imaginary Wonderchicken MeFi Tagline Compo and Meat Raffle continues :

Metafilter : Beat the troll with a roll of quarters
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:48 AM on December 27, 2001

Or

Troll the beat with a roll of quarters.
posted by y2karl at 9:49 AM on December 27, 2001

Have you written down

MetaFilter: You Suck, I Rule

yet?
posted by y2karl at 9:51 AM on December 27, 2001

Is that a troll of quarters in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
posted by dhartung at 9:05 PM on December 27, 2001

dlewis: odd. so you've scoured your registry like suzanne suggested and found no references to linkup.com? has your isp had you install any special dial-up or connection software that perhaps installs their copy of i.e. with edited .dll's? have you tried upgrading to explorer 6.0 [if that's an option] or have you tried replicating the problem in netscape or opera?

all those years as a tech support goon will pay off yet...
posted by boogah at 12:20 AM on December 28, 2001

Boogah: I scoured the registry for "loopup" and found the following keys in \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

Main\Default_Search_URL, Main\Search Bar, Main\Search Page and Search\SearchAssistant were all set to www.jethomepage.com/ie

Search\(Default) and SearchUrl\(Default) were set to a www.loopup.com PHP page.

I cleared these values, exited RegEdit and loaded IE (version 6.0, by the way). Then I typed in "lkjsadfkjldsf" to the address bar, hit return, and it took me ...... to the loopup search page. And asked me if I wanted to play at an online casino, or perhaps get some web hosting at a very reasonable rate :)

The weird thing is, I've done this registry business before, when I changed every thing I could find to Google. Some time later, I looked again, and they had all changed back!

I also tried grepping all the DLL's in the SYSTEM32 folder for the word - none of them came up. I think if I can be bothered, my next attempt will involve a low-level hard disk scan.
posted by dlewis at 5:31 AM on December 28, 2001