Sign In
Register
Help
To all who can help,
My family's computer has a small problem. When I check the history, many different obscene sites appear in it. I have questioned them and it appears that there is some form of a virus or spyware, but I am not sure. If someone could please help, that would be a greatly appreciated.
Page 1 of 1
Firefox Help
#1
Wolfman18336 
- Newbie
-
- Group: Members
- Posts: 2
- Joined: 02-October 07
Posted 04 October 2007 - 01:59 PM
MultiQuote
#2
lilxkid24
- Expert
-
- Group: Members
- Posts: 1,948
- Joined: 08-July 07
Posted 04 October 2007 - 02:11 PM
whenever you visit any site theres a history on it.. so it was either you or someone else went on the sites. if you think you have spyware scan it with avg, superantispyware, spybot, or lavasoft. All of them are free to use.
#3
mphenterprises
- Moderator
-
- Group: Moderators
- Posts: 12,259
- Joined: 19-February 07
- Location:Philadelphia, PA
Posted 04 October 2007 - 02:35 PM
Hi Wolfman. Welcome to PCWorld. :-)
Lilxkid is absolutely right. Web history does not just appear out of nowhere from a viral application. Someone in your household is visiting sites that leaves traces of itself, known as cookies, in your web history.
Now, a viral infection could be an effect of this, but it is certainly not a cause.
Lilxkid is absolutely right. Web history does not just appear out of nowhere from a viral application. Someone in your household is visiting sites that leaves traces of itself, known as cookies, in your web history.
Now, a viral infection could be an effect of this, but it is certainly not a cause.
#4
smax013
- Moderator
-
- Group: Moderators
- Posts: 9,119
- Joined: 28-January 07
- Location:Southeast Michigan
Posted 04 October 2007 - 03:16 PM
mphenterprises said:
Hi Wolfman. Welcome to PCWorld. :-)
Lilxkid is absolutely right. Web history does not just appear out of nowhere from a viral application. Someone in your household is visiting sites that leaves traces of itself, known as cookies, in your web history.
Now, a viral infection could be an effect of this, but it is certainly not a cause.
Lilxkid is absolutely right. Web history does not just appear out of nowhere from a viral application. Someone in your household is visiting sites that leaves traces of itself, known as cookies, in your web history.
Now, a viral infection could be an effect of this, but it is certainly not a cause.
Actually cookies and the web browser's histroy are two different things. Cookies will be small files that are placed on your computer to "keep track" of things for that website. They allow the web site to store your preferences or other things that allow the site to "taylor" the page to your specific tastes/interests and such. They can also be used to kind of track your movements. Browser history is a the browser on your computer keeping track of all the sites that anyone using your computer has visited. It is primarily there to make it easier for you to return to a site that you visited (i.e. you visit some site with some interesting stuff, but don't bookmark it...two days later, you want to go back to that site but don't recall the web address...you can go into your web browser history and look at the sites that you visited two days ago).
As pointed out, it is unlikely that malware/virus could create stuff out of no where. For entries to appear in the browser history, someone must have had the browser open and visited those site, either intentionally or unintentionally. It is possible that some sort of malware "hijacked" the browser and took someone to those sites without them intending to go to them. But, that still usually entails clicking on a "malware" link that than hijacks things.
You can clear the browser history. Since I don't have Firefox installed on this computer, someone else will have to point you to where you can do that in Firefox. I would suggest clearing the history and then keeping an eye on the history to see if more "nefarious" site appears after you clean it out.
#5
techie4fun
- Expert
-
- Group: Members
- Posts: 2,838
- Joined: 18-October 06
Posted 04 October 2007 - 05:55 PM
For Firefox, when the browser is opened hit CtrlShiftDel- That'll open up the Clear Private data options and then you can choose what you want to delete.
Page 1 of 1
