Why is this forum creating popups for me?

[Wrangeline]

Here is the problem:

When I open my favourites-menu and click on the shortcut I have there for the AO-forum I get a Lycos Sidesearch-bar squeesing into my browser. Its annoying and I have to turn it off every single time I go to the forum.

This ONLY happens with the AO-forums, nothing else.

I have done every single check there is for adware and viruses but nothing seems to remove this sidesearch-menu.

And why does it only come out when I go to these forums?

Its made by "Lycos" and its called "Sidesearch".

Please help.

[leggosboy]

Sounds like you got a backdoor installed, as unlike SOE's site, this one doesn't spam you unrelated advertising. Get adaware and/or spybot and they'll remove it from your machine.

[Wrangeline]

Sounds like you got a backdoor installed, as unlike SOE's site, this one doesn't spam you unrelated advertising. Get adaware and/or spybot and they'll remove it from your machine.

Got both of those. It doesnt help

[Jadedfixer]

If you are using IE, try getting firefox.(http://www.mozilla.org) Also get an ad-free hosts file for windows. That combination kills 99.9% of pop-ups for me.

[leggosboy]

Got both of those. It doesnt help

Wow, are you running any antivirus software? Update and run it or hit trendmicro.com and use their online scan. Also you can try to delete your temporary internet files (be sure to click "delete offline content"), but from what you're saying, it sounds like you've got something installed on your machine.

[Mharc]

How to remove lycos side search.

Scroll down on that page for a description on how to manually uninstall or use the downloadable program. Haven't tested it myself, but it looks like it should work.

[Volkemord]

Sounds like you got a backdoor installed, as unlike SOE's site, this one doesn't spam you unrelated advertising. Get adaware and/or spybot and they'll remove it from your machine.

No he has spyware, a backdoor is usually referred to innate coding of usernames and passwords, like admin/admin on cisco routers and things, a back door into the router if you forget your password or username, a lot of BIOS companies incorporate backdoors in their programming also. Can also be a reference to a trojan horse, which infects your system and then opens up a port to allow a virus to come through, similar to drilling a hole through your basement wall from the inside and filling it full of concrete that shouldn't be there.

[Psyloche]

Sound like its someting installed, look after a program to uninstall, it may be there. It does not sound like a serious virus/spybot imo.
btw, you ARE using the correct url?

[Qwikz]

This type of spyware is often called a "Hijacker". Hijacker's will add unwanted browser components, force redirection of homepages, and even give you pop-ups.

Many of them will provide a link to instructions on how to remove it but often this link demands your e-mail address in order to proceed. They want this so that although you remove their garbage they can still spam you and sell your e-mail address to other spammers.

Some of them have no removal tools like "cool web search" and its variants. For these you will need to turn to our friend Merijn and CW shredder .

You can also put a stop to many of these by installing Spyware Blaster by Javacool .

The only other one I trust is Adaware (lavasoftusa) It has developed to a point where Spybot search and Destroy may no longer be neccessary.

There are tons of programs to choose but always use caution. Many are not free and some have even been found to be cleverly disguised spyware themselves.

Surf safe!

[Wrangeline]

Well, here is what I did. Thanks for the help so far btw.

I didnt see any wierdo stuff installed on my computer. I ran all adware-checks including the ones in the post above this one. I went to the Micro-page and ran their virus scan. Didnt find anything.

So I tried something funky. I just deleted the link to this forum from my favorites-window and created a new one. No popup this time

I have no idea what this was but it seems to be gone now

[Wrangeline]

Err scratch that. Its back

I tried that removal process posted earlier but it didnt seem to help

[Guadoc]

Have you tried HijackThis http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/ Wrangeline? Never come across a BrowserHelper that it didn't get rid of. If you are unsure what is safe to delete then post the log here and we'll take a look at it.

Cheers

Guadoc