Help needed asap with Mac

monkeerina

Hey,

So I invested in a new Macbookpro about 2 months ago.

I had had a Macbook previously and had had zero problems with it in terms of viruses - I had thought they were pretty good for that. I never even installed an anti-virus on it.

So I am in Canada (and have been for the past 2 months). I recently moved into a house where I'm using the shared internet we have here. After about a day I notice that sometimes when I do a search in Google and then press the link to one of the search results that I am automatically re-directed to one of those annoying sites with more links to other sites, and sometimes something completely different. Then it gets to the stage that when I type in any not-so-secure site (i.e. not fb, google, boards, etc.) e.g. myp2p I cannot access it and am re-directed to something completely unrelated.

This has become worse and worse so I am pretty sure I am infected with something pretty bad. I was just on myp2p (managed to get around all the other stuff) and then went to press a link to the rugby and it redirected me to something else.

Oh also sometimes when I type in a web page or press a link another totally unrelated window will come up. But this is not just a pop-up problem, it's clearly something worse as when I type in an address I can see something re-directing me two, three or four times through different sites in the address bar.

This is happening both with GoogleChrome and Safari. I just got a completely official-looking pop-up in Safari saying I had won something and was un-able to exit out without shutting down....HELP please!!!!

Recommendations on anti-virus stuff??

Only other potentially relevant info I have is that one of the girls I live with here also has a mac and has been here a while....maybe irrelevant, sorry I'm not great with all this!

aidan_walsh

If this only started happening after you moved into this house try connecting to a different network and see does it still happen. Is the network you are on now connected via a router or shared through another computer?

monkeerina

thanks so much for the reply. Through a router I believe.

monkeerina

forgot to mention I also think something popped up (can't remember where exactly I saw it) about two days ago (when it started getting bad) saying I was linked with 'Joanna Xs' computer. (Joanna is the other housemate who has the macbook).

arodabomb

I had a very similar story on a brand new laptop (windows 7). Now I know not much of anything bad is written for Mac's but it sounds very similar to the goingonearth spyware, constant redirects from google using any main browser. One obvious symtom is that it won't let you search for goingonearth. I was told to run spyware doctor to get rid of it, nothing else had worked. Since it was a brand new laptop i decided to just reinstall the operating system.

monkeerina

Thanks, I can do a google search for goingonearth....must look into this more as it's very annoying!

yoyo

Is there a fake anti virus that pops up asking you to buy it? Something like MacDefender?

Nick