Yes, I admit it: I am sometimes gullible (aka: stupid). Maybe “over-trusting” but I should know better by now.
An acquaintance of mine on Twitter posted an article explaining a utility he uses called FreeMind. It’s an organizer, database, note-taker thing that seems really impressive and useful. His computer runs on Linux exclusively. I wondered if FreeMind had a windows version. I did a search and found it on a number of software sites I did not recognize, so I avoided those. I found FreeMind.com: (I think: or something similar) thought that should be the safest. Downloaded the installer. Ran the installer.
Icons started popping up all over my desktop and task bar.
WHAT THE HEY!?
I took an axe to the data pipe (pressed the WiFi key to shut off the interface) to stop its access to the Internet and hopefully shut down the program. That worked: it stopped.
I’ve spent the past couple of days rooting around and uninstalling things that were installed on that day. But something attached itself to Firefox and MSIE (not that I use MSIE, but this thing modifies the icon in the tray, so it’s obvious) that, upon start-up, displays a launch screen with icons for all my most often used internet services: Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, my blogs, etc. Similar to what Firefox itself does on that special start tab. That was OK, but it reserves most of the screen for targeted advertising powered by something called Safesear.ch. It gave a company name and USA address and an explanation (if I dug around hard enough) that this utility uses my browsing history to determine what ads are most relevant to me and displays them as a convenience to me.
Now, I’m not a fan of advertising in the first place, but something that insists on trying to get me to buy women’s dresses every time I start up my browser is especially annoying. I do NOT shop for women’s dresses. Really!
I looked for add-ons or plug-ins that I could remove: no dice. I looked for a program I could uninstall: saw nothing obvious. So my last ditch effort was to uninstall Firefox and reinstall from a copy I’d saved in my DOWNLOADS folder. That is a couple of years old, but should auto-update eventually. What really made me cry was that I’d loose all my bookmarks. I had just built up a great collection of magazines and eZines that pay for stories. Gone – Phffft.
Here’s the bullet-dodging part.
After I uninstalled Firefox I noticed a folder on my desktop labeled Old Firefox Data. That wasn’t there before, FireFox must have written it there as it exited. Hmmm … maybe I can import my bookmarks from that once FF is reinstalled. Hope loomed.
I re-installed.
I opened FireFox and found that all my bookmarks were already back in the program. Whoo-ahh! That’s why I like FireFox. And, there is no start-up screen saying “Wouldn’t you love to have this dress for spring?”
Once in a while, I just get lucky.
