"from=breadcrumbs" page hijacking?

[Cantiloper]

Hello!  I have no awareness of having signed up for Robohelp or of updating Adobe recently, but suddenly when I try to look at my local weather map I'm getting this URL instead:

http://www.weather.com/activities/health/coldandflu/?from=breadcrumbs

Does this have ANYTHING to do with Robohelp or Adobe? You seem to be the only forum discussing "breadcrumbs" a someting other than recipe ingredient! Or does anyone have any idea what it is?

If not, please feel free to delete this.

- Michael

[RoboWizard]

Hi there

This should have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Adobe. I cannot fathom a way the forums would do this.

I do know that sometimes shady web developers can do things to hijack pages. Perhaps that's what happened in your case. You visited the "Link of doom" and maybe the page had code that set this up silently.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7 or 8 within the day - $24.95! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[Cantiloper]

Many thanks Rick! Please feel free to simply delete the comment then so

it won't reflect on Adobe.

My Avira Antivirus program told me it was denying access to something

called feebs.gen last night (and no, I wasn't on any kinky web pages! LOL! It

just popped up while I was writing an email from AOL!) so maybe that has

something to do with it.

Thanks again!

Michael

Michael J. McFadden

Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains

Mid-Atlantic Director, Citizens Freedom Alliance, Inc.

Director, Pennsylvania Smokers' Action Network (PASAN)_

http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com_ (http://pasan.thetruthisalie.com/)

In a message dated 8/21/2009 12:00:16 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,

forums@adobe.com writes:

Hi there

This should have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Adobe. I cannot

fathom a way the forums would do this.

http://forums.adobe.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/9792/misfortune.gif

I do know that sometimes shady web developers can do things to hijack

pages. Perhaps that's what happened in your case. You visited the "Link of

doom" and maybe the page had code that set this up silently.

Cheers... Rick

http://www.robowizard.com/pc.gif

Helpful and Handy Links http://www.Adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform&product=38 http://www.gooberguides.com/ProductPages/RoboHelp/RoboHelp82Day.htm http://www.ShowMeSolutions.biz http://sorcererstone.wordpress.com/ http://www.gooberguides.com

[RoboWizard]

Hello again Michael

You must be infectious! One of my browser favorites points to Weather.com. Moments ago I went to check it and whaddya know? I'm getting the same thing you are. Looks like Weather.com has something screwy going on. I keep getting directed to the cold and flu report just as you cited.

Initially I took notice that the favicon for Weather.com was that of an Adobe icon. I thought that was rather odd!

I think I'll see if there is a place to report this to the weather.com webmaster/webmistress.

Thanks... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7 or 8 within the day - $24.95! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[Cantiloper]

If I'm infectious, it's on a massive scale. 😆

Check out the flu map from weather.com

_http://www.weather.com/activities/health/coldandflu/nationalreports/nationa

l.html_

(http://www.weather.com/activities/health/coldandflu/nationalreports/national.html)

and then compare it to google-flu:

Google Flu Trends | United States

(http://www.google.org/flutrends/intl/en_us/)

LOL!

There's definitely SUMTING Goofy goin' on!

😆

Michael

Michael J. McFadden

Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains

Mid-Atlantic Director, Citizens Freedom Alliance, Inc.

Director, Pennsylvania Smokers' Action Network (PASAN)_

http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com_ (http://pasan.thetruthisalie.com/)

[Cantiloper]

An update... I did a google search on "from=breadcrumbs" - the thing now

appearing at the end of my weather.com bookmark - and eventually found the

following:

iBreadCrumbs (http://www.ibreadcrumbs.com/)

It appears to be some form of voluntary webtracker, supposedly to be used

for sharing research, but with the obvious drawback of creating a shareable

(and I imagine, possibly "grab-able") record of every site you visit... a

page-logger.

I have no memory of clicking on anything that would install such a thing on

my computer (though I did see something in their "demo" film that

indicated it might be a new option on Firefox or something that could be

accidentally clicked.)

In any event, I'm now going to try to determine if this thing is actually

running on my machine and if it's created a file somewhere that someone else

could conceivably grab. I'm quite an active activist in an area where

some very high tensions are involved and which in the past has seen a lot of

hacker activity. It's possible someone out there was hoping that I'd lead

them to evidence of my "secret connections" to "Big Tobacco" LOL!! Or

alternatively hoping they could find out I'm a porno freak or somesuch in order

to blackmail or discredit me. Heh... if they've been going through my

webpages they'll have been pretty bored I'm not into porn, and the closest

I come to Big T is buying their smokes! 😆

OK! Just thought you might be interested in the update!

Michael

Michael J. McFadden

Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains

Mid-Atlantic Director, Citizens Freedom Alliance, Inc.

Director, Pennsylvania Smokers' Action Network (PASAN)_

http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com_ (http://pasan.thetruthisalie.com/)

[Wirely]

I had been having the identical problem with Firefox on my home computer, but not on my work computer; and I found this forum thread to be the answer:

http://www.fz1-forum.com/forum/bar/1893-weather-com-messed-up.html

The short answer is: it has nothing to do with Adobe. It is a browser cache problem and is solved simply by clearning the cache.

I have Firefox at work set to clear the cache every time the browser exits, explaining why I only saw the problem at home.