Any Techies Working New Year's Day?

[sir.prize]

The New Year brought me an unexpected and unwanted surprise
Internet Exploer is fine but when using Firefox every website is showing random words in green and underlined. When the cursor hovers over one of those words a pop up ad appears. This is probably adware but I am struggling to remove it. See screenshot below.

I have run a full scan in both Malwarebytes and AVG but the problem persists. Any ideas?

http://i43.tinypic.com/awuywi.jpg

And a Happy New Year to all Answerbank users.

[plowter]

Looks like a link redirector - a type of spyware/adware.
Have you checked for add-ons in Firefox?
Malwarebytes should pick it up.
Otherwise scan with your anti-virus or Spybot.

[sir.prize]

Thanks plowter for your great advice. I got the blighter! It was Shockwave in Firefox Add-ons.

Apparently it 'self abled'. Naughty new year elves playing about eh?

[Alex_Higham]

Good afternoon sir.prize and a happy new year to you.

As indicated by methyl, your problem has nothing to do with Shockwave. However, if you were to respond to methyl's posting, it is possible that matters can be satisfactorily resolved.

My opinion is that you may have downloaded an Add-on for Firefox and something such as Yontoo may have come along with it. A year or so back folk were experiencing such a problem with Firefox; so hopefully you have an up-to-date Browser.........it should be FF 26.

Have a look in Firefox Add-ons and see if there is anything you can't remember deliberately downloading and then report back in this thread.

[sir.prize]

Hi Alex and Methyl. Thanks for your responses.

Firstly I am using Windows XP. Desktop PC. Firefox 26 Browser. Malwarebytes and AVG Free 2014. I presume you saw the tinypic link I posted above.

I did search on the web for a possible answer to the green text/underlined. I found a reference that it may have been 'attached' to the Adobe Shockwave Flash Player Add-on in Firefox. This would explain why the problem did not arise in IE.

I was advised to disable Shockwave Flash Add-on. I did - and the problem disappeared. Then I found that I could not play videos. So re-enabled Shockwave Flash and everything is now OK. No greenies anywhere!

PS: Malwarebytes scan showed nothing.

Thanks again guys and best wishes for 2014.