Help needed please

trafalgar_2

I used to have no problems with my search engine........Google

But now mainly shows american sites when searching and for some reason ...........'microsoft international ' pop-ups are appearing  :-/............they seem to be from a 'search assistant'

I haven't asked for assistance and don't want it as .it always find the wrong thing anyway

Anybody know what this is and how I can get rid of it ......................Please

rygon

download ad-aware fom https://www.lavasoft.de this should help with ya "assistant" i find many things come from the u.s as well. search site like google make there money by allowing website to buy a top place in searches. unfortunately other site which fit the search better are then demoted down the list.
try norrowing down the search by being more specific. i always put "uk" at the end of my searches to help pick out uk sites (although it still comes up with some u.s sites)
If you use https://www.google.co.uk you can pick if you want to search uk site only.

trafalgar_2

Thank rygon

I always select uk only anyway but I have accidently ;D
found what seems to be the problem

Somehow something called '180 search assistant' got on my pc

I have uninstalled it now.............pesky thing that it is ::)

and everything is back to normal now

Never had a problem like this before,I have anti-virus stuff and zone-alarm
would you recommend I still use ad-aware as well ???

Thanks for your help

sra

I use spywareblaster - which stops these things getting installed in the first place (download.com).

As recently as last night spywareblaster protected me. I was looking for a picture to put under my name here (like your flag) and I clicked on the first listing google gave.

The page refused to load. It was only later I discovered that spywareblaster had added it to my IE restricted list because the site installs stuff without permission (One unfortunate thing about spywareblaster is that it does things silently so you don't know when it is protecting you).

Also a few months ago my sister went onto a music site and couldn't get it to load. When I read the very-small-print at the bottom of the screen I found that it charged £1.50 a minute by installing a dialler. I assume I have spywareblaster to thank again for refusing it.

I also use spybot search and destroy and adaware - I only run them once a week and they remove a lot of stuff that my anti-virus software don't consider viruses.

trafalgar_2

Brilliant , I'll get right on to it

Thanks