What is "text-enhance," how did I get it, and how do I get rid of it?

Hmm. Reading the website… it appears that this is something that Fluther has enabled, not me. Does anyone else see this “feature?”

It’s happened to me on other sites, but not on Fluther. And, yes, it’s very annoying!

If it happens to you on every site you use, it’s probably a virus (or, more specifically, adware). If it just happens on a few specific sites, then it’s a “feature” of those sites.

I’ve seen it in the past, and if I can remember the Chrome extension that I used to disable it then I’ll try to remember to mention it. I agree that it’s annoying as hell, but I wouldn’t worry that it’s a virus; I think it’s some kind of “browser helper object” (that’s a real term that you can google) that has been somehow inadvertently added to your system. I think I used some kind of AdAware extension to disable it, but I don’t recall exactly.

No. I haven’t had this. Could it be something you accidently downloaded? One of those ‘tool’ things that come as additions to other downloads? Can you run something like Spybot or similar and your virus software?

The website is not completely honest. It is entirely possible to see these text links due to something you have downloaded. If you are seeing advertisements on Fluther while logged in, then you probably have some adware on your computer of which you are unaware. What browser are you using?

It’s definitely not Fluther. It’s usually a virus.

Its adware or malware.

Fluther actually used to have these if you were not logged in. I bitched about it in meta about a year ago. But they don’t do it anymore.

It might not be a virus. It could actually be a rouge Firefox/Chrome/Safari extension. I would try disabling any add-ons and see if they go away.

And they just rolled out a update to ad-block plus that by default allows some ads through. But you can turn that off.

@johnpowell – Right. Unfortunately, every company that makes browsers has their hands in the pockets of a hoard of advertisers, and visa-versa. And Google is responsible for 90% of all the advertising on the web, so I wouldn’t jump to Chrome as the savior of the web. The only way to completely stop this sort of nonsense is to write your own browser from scratch.

The website, which came up when I searched for “text enhance” gave me the option to “opt out.” They’re gone, now.
That was strange.

Opting out downloads a cookie that disables or blocks whatever you’ve previously downloaded or whatever the website is serving in addition to its content. There could still be stuff on your computer worth removing, though.

I’ll run a scan, thanks. :)