Help! My iMac has a trojan

And beyond that, consider that malware (including viruses & social exploits of all kinds) often affect even those whose computers are not infected with them.

We Mac users don't live in a closed world. There is probably lots of personal info about each of us on dozens if not thousands of other computers accessible through the Internet. Even if we do nothing besides accidentally pass some malware that can't infect our computers on to someone's computer that it can, it can materially impact our personal security & privacy.

Silly as it sounds, it might help to think of it a little like the example of Typhoid Mary. Like with biological viruses effectively stopping the spread of computer malware is a cooperative effort, sometimes necessitating the participation of those that are immune to their direct effects.

fender542 wrote:

How do you know if there's a bad plugin?

It's rarely a plug-in these days and that would be affecting all of your browsers.

Most likely a Chrome Extension. Give us a list of what you have and maybe we can spot it without your having to remove everything.

I went to my Internet plugins and deleted the adobe flash plugin. Internet works great now. So I then deleted adobe flash completely and then reloaded it. Internet still works great

I went to my Internet plugins and deleted the adobe flash plugin.

That will not solve Daew's problem. Flash is not the cause of a problem with Chrome displaying ads or redirecting. As already pointed out multiple times now, the problem is caused by a Chrome extension.

Flash on Chrome is a plugin, so it's entirely possible that that did solve it. Chrome does not use the System install of Flash, but has it's own seperate implementation that is downloaded standalone. I do belive it shows up as a plugin in Chrome's list of chome:plugins.

See here:

http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=108086

Again, Flash is not causing the problem. Flash does not cause advertisements to appear on every page. Further, Chrome's version of Flash is not kept in a place called "Internet Plugins" - that's the name of two different folders where system-wide internet plug-ins are kept.

gen_ wrote:

Flash on Chrome is a plugin, so it's entirely possible that that did solve it.

Solve what? fender542 jumped in here and never told us exactly what his situation was.

I beg your pardon, I assumed that fender was the OP. And again, to me 'Chrome Extension' is just another term for plugin, so I assumend that (being OP and having problems with Chrome) he could have meant he cleared his chrome plugins folder in the app.

I did reinstall Chrome, but didn't fix the issue (but I haven't deleted all the plugins yet).

Yeah, reinstalling Chrome wouldn't work, because the installed Chrome extensions would stay behind and be used by the fresh copy of Chrome. I know it got loud here, but the important thing is that you check your Chrome extensions.

Daew wrote:

The problem solved! I deleted all the plugins, but still didn't solve the problem.

I think all but one of us told you that it would not.

I went ahead and deleted all extensions for Chrome. Voila! The problem is no longer present.

I'm certainly happy for you, but since you never told us what those extensions were and you deleted them all at once, we won't know how to help the next user with this problem.

This is the Apple Community Support forum and most of us are here to try and help the Community.

Daew wrote:

I revisited with my best efforts, and the likely culprit was a Chrome extension called "FastSave." I have no recollection of installing this extension...

That's one of the usual suspects that get's installed when you don't notice an opt-in check box while doing something else in Chrome. It's been going on for at least six months now. Torrent downloads are one such known source.