malware

I seem to have contracted what may be a search redirect virus, possibly one called "ilitili". What happens is this: When I am on a web page, certain words appear in blue and underlined; if I hover the cursor over one of those words, up pops an ad from any one of a number of websites, including zbiddy.com, yellowmoxie.com, enhance.com, informationgetter.com, or coupondropdown.com, as well as others. If I remove the cursor, the ad disappears after about two seconds. If I click on the ad, then I am taken to a website where there are various offers or items for sale. All popups are in the same format, with the URL of the sponsoring website in greyed-out text at the bottom, along with an X to close the popup and a question mark. Clicking on the X does not actually close the box but opens it. Clicking on the question mark takes you to a page on the sponsor's website where one of the options is to opt out. Clicking on the opt out choice allows you to enter an email address. When you click to opt out, you get a message saying that it will take up to ten days to stop sending ads. So far, using the opt out feature seems to have made no difference.

I cannot admit to noticing any appreciable change in the operation of my iMac (OS 10.6) since these popups have been occurring. Loading web pages occasionally is slower than used to be the case, but that was happening before these popups started appearing.

My online research indicates that this kind of problem--at least for Windows computers--may a search redirect virus, though I can't say I've noticed searches being redirected more often than always has been the case. The problem occurs after a web page has loaded, not while searching. My research also indicated that there is a virus named "ilitili" that does what I've described, though it may be affecting only Windows computers and technically may not be a search redirect virus.

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who knows what's going on and what to do to stop it and prevent it from happening again. Thanks.