If you use the Firefox browser.....

Firefox is my favorite browser, even though I also have Opera and I.E. 10 also. Lately, however, since a recent automatic update, it hasn't been closing properly when being shut down. Today, while trying to fix that problem by re-installing it,
I got into another problem that took even longer to fix....

It seems some smart-ass has spoofed a download site for it, and added into the mix several items of 'bloatware' including one new taskbar, which I didn't see any option for refusing during the install. I should have stopped right there. But I went ahead and installed Firefox, and then followed a lot of trouble getting rid of that unwanted add-on, called 'Mysearchdial'. Instructions said to simply go to the Control Panel's 'Programs and Features' (formerly Add/Remove Programs) and delete it from there. Did that. It disappeared from that list, but not from my computer.

I went into Firefox Add-ons, and selected 'Remove' for it there. It still wasn't gone from the lists of items in Firefox 'about:config' accessed from the address bar and showing all the various choices for tuning the browser's code. I went down that list, and disabled as much of its stuff as I could safely understand, and then having reset my search choice to Google, I checked yet another website for advice, and that seemed as if I'd done everything already.

Then, I ran a virus scan, because some of the sites I'd been checking said that this could be installing malware even though it wasn't malware itself. So to find out if I had any infection on here, I ran a scan with Malwarebytes Pro, and it found 14 items that shouldn't be here. It removed them, and a couple of other follow-up scans indicate the machine is now clean again. And all of that took a
nerve-wracking hour or so. All because I didn't check carefully enough when the little download window came on screen. Make sure it says that your download is coming from Mozilla.org and not somewhere else. And those 14 items weren't already on here from earlier, because I'd already ran one scan first thing this morning, right after start-up. So I'm sure those all came with that toolbar that I didn't want. And the guy who wrote that it could be installing malware was right. It did. Luckily, I caught it before it was here very long. So watch where your downloads are really originating from and if that's not where you thought,
then stop right there, and save yourself a lot of trouble. Verify that you're on the right source before you download something. It can save time and aggravation.