Is this a computer virus? Details inside?

This won’t be helpful to you, but it is kind of funny given the question
http://xkcd.com/1180/

Oh noes! I opened this flutter question and now my account got a virus!
Do you have any toolbars installed? Any decorative mouse cursors? Get rid of all of those? Weather bug? Pitch it! Get rid of anything you downloaded after you learned about it from an ad banner

I don’t think its a virus. I think that when you visit some websites you go through an intermediary page (or pages) that loads the ads. Its annoying but not necessarily bad.

I think Bing is pretty good at doing stuff like you describe. After you get your computer cleaned up, stop using Bing, and see if it goes away.

Do you use Firefox or Chrome? Get Adblock Plus

@Rarebear Very apropos!
@drhat77 I don’t download from banner ads, I ignore ads completely and that includes skipping the two or three that show up at the top of the list.
@Lightlyseared perhaps it has been there all along and I just did not notice. It does not become a problem unless I use the back button. If it has these intermediates in it, it will not allow me to go back. I have to bring up the list and select where I want to go, after that it will reload the original page.
@snowberry I went to Bing because I got tired of all the crap on Google. Guess I need to look elsewhere, any suggestions?
@flip86 Don’t use Chrome, have used firefox before but not presently. Maybe I should go back. Will Adblock Plus work on anything or just Firefox?

@rojo: “I went to Bing because I got tired of all the crap on Google. Guess I need to look elsewhere, any suggestions?”

If you have issues with Google, but still want their superior search results (it just is significantly better than Bing, even if you’re not using the Google-integration stuff), you should try duckduckgo. I love Google, but the standard path from Google due to ideological or other reasons seems to be to duckduckgo.

Here’s one you might like. It’s been recommended by many computer savvy folks.

It does not track your searches as Goog does.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo

I suggest installing Ghostery. It will help you pinpoint where things have gone wrong.

And first and foremost disable all extensions and plug-ins in your browser. If the problem goes away it makes it a lot easier to find out if it your computer or browser.

I second Adblock Plus. It works great.

Just a note. Ad-Block Edge is a fork of adblock plus and is actually better since the developer isn’t being paid by google to allow google ads like the guy behind adblock plus is.

@johnpowell I use ghostery as well. I like it but it tends to block a little too much and renders some websites unusable. I don’t recommend it to people unless I know they are computer savvy.

@rojo Yes, Adblock supports Android, Opera and IE. It never used to support IE until quite recently. Firefox and Chrome are my top choices.

@flip86 :: True about ghostery. But my mom uses it and she has only complained once. I told her how to allow stuff and she listened.