my unfortunate experience with page redirectors/spyware

[vhelp]

lately, since last week or two, i've been plagued by a ton of re-directed page requests, both my home pc and netbook, and these are slowing down my pc a lot. most of these redirects are going to more than one website. and if i look hard enougth at the status line, i can at least 5 or more redirect pages flashing down there, and this is any time i go to videohelp and/or do any page refresh here.

also, every time i go to a page here or refresh a page here, there is a pause for maybe 2 seconds, then the pages start to refresh and finally display. there is also a pause at certain intervals when i press the cursor up/down keys, though when i use my mouse scroll wheel pause/interval problem isn't there.

here are some examples of what i could catch in my statusbar so far:

'waiting for googleads.s.doubleclick.net...'
'transfering data from googleads.g.doubleclick.net...'
'transfering data from s.skimresources.com...'

but, there are a lot of different pages then the ones you see above. they go to fast for me to catch..i cought maybe 5 or so before i lost track of what's flickering before me.

so i spent the last three or so days trying to clean my window/browser [firefox 7.0.1] of what i think are either mailware, viruses and/or trojans, but can't seem to clean any of them out. they all started when i first started seeing only the s.skimresource.com redirects on videohelp. then i started seeing the googleads and then doublelick, etc. now i'm seeing everything flash in my status bar and my browser is getting slower and slower to refresh a page, weather here on videohelp or other webpages, though it used to be just videohelp, now its about every webpage via google search.

so i'm pretty wared out from all this cleaning, but mainly not being able to clean any of them. the issues above continue to no avail. so, i decided to fork over a few bucks, and tried kaspersky, mailwarebytes, system shield (it never completes because it keeps crashes after somewhere between 19,000 or 86,000 files scanned) mcafee, etc.

then i tried a highly recommended virus/spyware removal app, STOPzilla. its suppose to find everything, and then remove them--but theres a catch to that, that no one mentioned...so it found the most problems, first it found 5, then 15, then 30, then 35, and now 45 viruses, trojans, and spyware. the other software's could only find 1 or 2, yes, thats it. and everytime mcafee, system shield or malwarebytes would remove 1 or 2, STOPzilla would find additional (new) problems, thus the 15, 30, 35, and now 45. but here's the show-stopper. to my surprise, stopzilla requires that i reg$ster (pay) for the removal of the virus/trojans, so its not so freeware after all.

so the headacke of all this experience is that it takes hours to scan and complete (when it does complete) and then the issues are either still there or additional new ones surface.

as of currently, i'm left confused and frustrated and fear nothing will remove these latest attacks. so far $120 bucks down the drain. this was the exact reason why i wanted to image my system before something like this were to happen, but all too late now.

[netmask56]

Time to format the hard disk and reinstall the operating system and software. This time don't connect to the internet until you have installed a couple of free antivirus programs like for example AVG Free, also make sure you have a firewall, MS is OK. Then don't click on sites that flash "your computer is infected click here for a free assessment etc" LOL! It would be a good idea to get a copiy of AVG Free from a known uninfected computer as I wouldn't trust anything you download on your present set up.

[jagabo]

Next time use NoScript to block java script globally. Then only enable java script for sites you trust. Put sites like doubleclick.net and skimresources.com in your hosts file, linked to localhost. Use AdBlock Plus to block ads.

[budwzr]

Yeah, no script stops 'em dead. That friggin' Java and Adobe Flash scripting can do some serious damage. And use plain text e-mail so you can see where the links go.

And these "Free" file transfer sites are loaded with malware too.

I tried AVG several times, and it always ends up bogging down the system, false alarms, and screws up the networking.

[aedipuss]

it may not be malware at all but slow servers at googlesyndication and skimresourses. use firefox and noscript like the guys said and don't allow those sites access to your computer. it doesn't effect the website here at all. it loads just fine and in no time.

[jagabo]

it may not be malware at all but slow servers at googlesyndication and skimresourses.

Yes, but they are sites you don't need. They aren't there for your benefit. **** 'em.

[Poppa_Meth]

Rkill and Combofix probably would have cleaned your redirect issue completely free.