How can I remove tradeadexchange malware?

Carnationlilyrose wrote:

I have F-Secure running, which I presume falls into the category of anti-virus which you say is damaging. It came with my internet provider 'kit'.

It did so because your provider gets a monetary gain by doing so, it's not to help you, it is to give profit to them.

My advice right now. Don't do anything. Take a break and let this all percolate. Then come back to it. As for the noise, you don't need to be a computer expert to get a feeling for who is exaggerating, who is more interested in being "right," and offering pronouncements, rather than really trying to help.

It is true that Virginmedia are representative of most (not all) providers, in the UK I use Sky, in the US it's Comcast, both 'bundle' unnecessary (and performance damaging) software, Comcast even go as far as recommending that you use it. The reason is the same in both cases, the providers profit from it. Sadly the user does not. Caveat Emptor rules as usual.

Chrome is a Google product (which I am sure you know already), it exists to facilitate Googles large scale data collection policies, data which they then resell to interested parties in order to profit from it.

In the case of most 'free' products you are the product.

😁

But back to the subject, cleaning junk off of your Mac is best done by erasing it and restoring from the backup that you should be keeping, that way you can just go back to the time before your Mac was compromised.

The only method of truly safeguarding yourself is backup, backup, and backup.

Adblock Plus, Adblock Pro, Adblock Super, Adguard Adblocker, Calendar and Countdown, Clearly, Extension Defender, Hover Zoom, McAfee Secure safe browsing, Pin It button, Search by Image by Google, Settings button, Speed Dial 2, Stylish, Tampermonkey, TinEye, Wikiwand and TSR Add Ons,

I have not read everything in this thread, but this list is overdoing it by miles:

1. Use only one adblocker, and realise how these people are harassed by ad companies to whitelist their ads (and they are willingly pay for such), as far as I could research the most ethical is Adblock, get rid of the rest. You can also remove any adblocker by avoiding sites with an overdose of ads: obviously their earning model is selling ads instead of content.

2. McAfee is one of the worst AV softwares that is not only doing nothing on a mac, but counterproductive with the OSX built in safety methods and really compromising your system. the very worst - even in Windows - are McAfee and Symantec/Norton.

3. You can delete Search by image by Google, since Google stopped the image sites. Tampermonkey suspect, the rest I do not know.

Lex

Carnationlilyrose wrote:

I have deleted Adblock Super via the trashcan. I just wondered if getting rid of it that way got rid of it entirely. Nothing else seems that easy!

For browser extensions, it actually is that easy, as long as that's all that was installed. If you downloaded Adblock Super from the Chrome store, which is the only place I've ever seen it, then deleting it using that trash can button in Chrome is sufficient to remove it entirely.

I don't use Safari - the only time I use it is to download Chrome when I uninstalled it. It doesn't happen when I use Safari on my ipad, however, nor on my husband's windows laptop, if that is relevant to the hijack question.

That's good information, and that suggests that the problem is definitely not related to any kind of network hack.

I appreciate that you don't generally use Safari, but it would help narrow down the cause of the problem if you could open Safari and just do some typical web browsing, until you see the problem occur in Safari, or you feel reasonably sure that it isn't happening in Safari. If it's not happening in Safari, that pretty definitively shows that one of your other Chrome extensions is causing the problem.

That's all assuming that the problem is still occurring after removing Adblock Super.

Carnationlilyrose wrote:

I get the feeling that I've walked into someone else's fight.

Yes, unfortunately, there's a very significant difference of opinion here as to what kind of advice for removing adware is acceptable. This unfortunately can degenerate into arguments. Sorry that you got caught in the middle.

Carnationlilyrose wrote:

Ok, thanks. I got rid of a lot of them before you posted but I have thinned it down more. I'm afraid the Chrome Store is a bit like a sweet shop. However, in my naivety I tended to assume that things from the Chrome store had some form of official sanction. I realise that this was stupid of me, but in my defence I'd say 95% of people think this way.

More like the Gingerbread house.