Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Be careful of apps that hijack your browser

For example, I don't know if it is still there but I went into the Amtrak site online to help a friend get a train ticket in the last year. However, this turned out to be a nightmare because what they had at Amtrak hijacked my Firefox Browser on my wife's Imac. Because No matter what I did permanently cleaned my firefox browser of all the hijacking programs I finally had to delete the firefox permanently from my wife's 27 inch Imac.

So, this meant I could not blog on this computer in firefox because of the hijacked browser problem. However, I also have 2 laptops, one is a about a 2009 Macbook pro and a 2016 macbook pro both 15 inch screens for easier viewing. However, on my older Macbook pro it also was hijacked by a rogue browser when I was trying to make my Google Chrome device that plugs into the back of your flat screen work for transmitting pictures from Youtube and similar places like movies and documentaries or whatever direct to your large flatscreen in the living room. So, in the process of making all this work with one of my daughters the 2009 macbook pro also got a hijacked browser on it. Now, I can still use this browser without problems by searching for Google.com or Yahoo.com to search with so the problems of being misdirected when I do a search are minimized.

But, the point is people out there when you least expect it are going to ask you to do steps that will hijack your browser while you are doing something else completely without informing you of what they are doing to your computer. So, in the last couple of years these browser hijackers have infected two of our computers. The worst one was from Amtrak Website which I couldn't find a way to completely clean it. I even deleted the Firefox completely from my wife's computer and then re-installed it and it was still infected somehow by the rogue browser hijacking software.

So, be careful of this or it might interfere with your searches or your blogging. The more knowledgeable you are the more you need to be on guard about things like this which can make your experience difficult online.

Recently, Blogger.com tried to get me to do another layer of security for my site here. They wanted (because I blog from at least 3 computers) and read my blog from about 5 to 10 different sources, to add a layer of security by forcing me to receive a text of a number code on my phone for example every time I log on. I realized this wasn't helpful to me at all so I de-activated it today after putting up with it for about a week or more so far because they were having a problem with me blogging from one more new computer I guess.

So, security is helpful sometimes. But, you have to consider who is this security really helping and think it through some because often security is just about stealing more information from you, and Google is one of the worst culprits at this along with Facebook of any companies online.

Then they sell whatever information about you to advertising companies so they can sell you whatever you have been looking at online. So, it is used for targeted adds directly at you by advertising companies all over the world.

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