Google Problem "computer or network may be sending automated queries", what to do?

Norton has been known to commonly mis-diagnose normal network activity as ARP Poisining "attacks." One discussion I saw involved an HTC phone that, even when restored to factory settings and with no apps added, would cause a Mac on the same network to experience constant "attacks" reported by Norton. They're not really attacks, though. Ditch Norton. If you really want anti-virus software, use Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition or ClamXav, both of which are free.

As to the message from Google, where exactly are you seeing this, and what is the exact message? And have you installed all Java- or Flashback-related updates that appear in Software Update?

Max2711 wrote:

Thanks for your answers.

@ Csound: How do I restore a "safe"backup, how do I know what data is safe and which is not??

@ Thomas: Right now the message comes when I've typed in a search. Then comes a CAPTCHA field and google is telling me, that there's a lot of traffic from my Computer. Before there was no captcha field. I typed "google.com" in the browser and then google told me ...computer or network may be sending automated queries.... ( I don't know exactly what there was standing, because now there stands something else...)

At this point I would defer to Thomas, if this is a 'false' warning you do not want to erase and restore, let's wait.

I had never heard of such a message before, but a search turns up:

http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=86640

It's unlikely that your Mac has malware that is causing this. It's possible that a Windows computer on your local network is infected with something. It's also possible that, if you're using a wireless network with no password that you have a "squatter" (a nearby neighbor) using your network, whose computer is infected. Lock down the network with WPA2 encryption using a good, strong password. If that's not it, note that the IP addresses used by most home networks are allocated from a pool of addresses, and may change at any time. So it's possible that someone who was infected with malware drew the attention of Google's algorithms, and then the IP addresses were reallocated and now you're using that IP address. You can try rebooting your cable or DSL modem, as that can give you a new IP address, if it's given a different one from the pool.

Yes, Norton is difficult to remove, a deliberate choice by Symantec I suspect, but I am far from convinced that your computer is doing this. Follow Thomas's suggestions, erase and install should be the last, not the first option.

I am actually having the exact same problem as you right now, mein Freund. Did you ever find a solution for this?

In my case it's actually even a little more weird, as I'm getting variations of http://www.google.com/sorry/ and the captcha page

"Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. This page checks to see if it's really you sending the requests, and not a robot."

on firefox 14.0.1 only, it still works in Safari.

As it turns out, in my case Firefox 14 was the culprit. Running on a seperate Mac that's up 24/7 it seems to have sent constant requests to Google. I'm still not sure what was going on there, but ever since I stopped using FF the issue was resolved.

Maybe this can help anyone having the same trouble.

Congratulations on becoming a spammer, disconnect your machine from the internet and do not reconnect until you get this resolved by, erasing your hard drive and restoring a safe backup.