Intrusive marketing

[mikeebb]

It certainly sounds like you have a serious adware infection. If it's on a work laptop your IT dept may just re-image it (back up your data if IT doesn't already do it, and run a malware scanner on it). A major malware scan & clean is in order otherwise, too. Finally, install an adblocker in your browser(s) and check your settings - FF and Chrome now have some built-in ability to block ads and unwanted scripts, though in keeping with their provenance FF has it on by default and Chrome doesn't.

Note that almost everybody now uses (or soon will) Chrome, even if they use Edge. ChrEdge is rolling out to Windows Update now, so all major browsers (other than Firefox and Apple's Webkit based Safari) are Chrome-based. Neither Waterfox (has been bought and neutralized) and Pale Moon are hardly a "major" browsers. Internet Explorer is (or should) only be used within a corporate intranet for apps that require it to start - never for actual internet surfing.

[rdayt]

Malwarebytes. Free.

Go ahead and use the pro version for now (30 days free), then you can switch to the free version.

Randy

[frliss]

Besides my pro version of AVG Ultimate Internet Security I have run several freeware security program and a few adware removers and still get the same results.

I finally spoke to a friend of mine who is a retired programmer. He told me that I definitely do not have an infection. I am not getting ads when the blocker is on and I am getting ads in the right places to sites that are whitelisted. Its just that they seem to know what I'm reading. He finally told me the same thing that Derek mentioned earlier in this thread, that it's all done with cookies.

Fred

[mmax45581]

To stop the tracking a little bit, you can set your browser to disallow third party cookies (meaning any cookies that are from a different website than you are visiting).
Please note that if you use anything requiring a Microsoft account with the browser, you then need to whitelist cookies from "login.microsoftonline.com", otherwise you will not be able to login to these services anymore.

[frliss]

To stop the tracking a little bit, you can set your browser to disallow third party cookies (meaning any cookies that are from a different website than you are visiting).
Please note that if you use anything requiring a Microsoft account with the browser, you then need to whitelist cookies from "login.microsoftonline.com", otherwise you will not be able to login to these services anymore.

It doesn't bother me that as I read your reply there is an ad for sending better bulk emails at the top of my screen. (I call that spam.)

I was just concerned about the security of my data which seems to be OK.

Fred