Still HiJacked - But WHY?

Not too long ago I wrote a post about my computer's browsers having been hijacked.

In case you missed it, and in case you've never had the privilege of being so attacked, a hijacking is when a malicious coder drops directions into your browser's instruction set to go to locations other than the ones you ask for.

I was incensed enough when I first discovered this to actually write some of the companies to whose website I was mis-directed and alert them that I would let people know they were taking part in a hijacking, and what possible good could they think would come of dragging a user away from a location they chose to a location that typically had nothing to do with what they were looking for?

One company wrote me back, all innocence and sweetness, full of platitudes about "respecting our users" and "privacy" and a lot of other bollocks. I say that because it really is up to website owners who try to drive traffic to their sites - particularly if they buy into third party "aggregators" and link feeds - to know what's going on.

The problem with hijackers - the malware, that is - is that it's so unbelievably difficult to get rid of, and it wastes so much of your time.

A few years ago, I literally had to trash a computer completely because it had been hijacked. My browsers became completely unusable. It didn't help to download a new copy and reinstall - the malware had hidden itself in a root kit, which I also wrote about before. This root kit is information that, often disguised as necessary files, sits in your computer's registry, and as soon as an attempt is made to get rid of the offending hijacker, it simply reinstalls it. Over, and over, and over again. You can, as I did that time, spend hours picking tidbits of code out of your registry - at great risk to your operating system, as it is so easy to make a mistake - and still not solve the problem. Or you can buy fix after fix after fix, some of which will help a little, or help for a while, and eventually you're right back where you started.

One solution, my geekier friends tell me, is to use Chrome, which, because of its relative lack of popularity, and the way its coded, hasn't been as likely a victim for the Malware People (I imagine these Walking Dead like types, sitting in creepy basement offices laughing manically as they write another root kit and send it out on the virtual shipping lanes...).  And yes, that's probably what I'll end up doing in this case, as I really don't have the time to keep fussing with Firefox.

But of course, there's all that personalization you do with a browser, so it's annoying to do it again.

But truth to tell, I've done a lot of research on this one, and Hijackers are among the most difficult forms of malware to get rid of. And of course, because we are so aware of them, we can't - and don't - just go on about our business, either not knowing what they're up to, or not much caring. I suppose the one good thing you can say about them is that they're so in-your-face you can't miss them, so you know without a doubt that there is malware lurking somewhere on your machine.

All the usual recommendations still apply: make sure you are always running a virus protection program and you're behind a firewall; don't download random files or programs, either from unknown websites or in the form of email attachments; never believe it when something is offered "free" that shouldn't be; and always run your malware protection software on a regular basis.

None of it will bail me out of this one, and I remain uncertain what I did that allowed the malware in to begin with, but the very least I can do is remind you all one more time!