Authentication Scam Pop-Up

On Tue, 07 Feb 2017 18:48:19 -0500, Paul
wrote:

Boris wrote:
Win7, 64-bit

This is happening in both Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers, when I
use Google as a search engine, and only when I Google "lowes" in the URL
box, and then select the first result, "Lowes Official Site". It doesn't
happen with any other search, for instance Best Buy or Home Depot.

This is what I see.

Lowes.com - Official Website
Ad www.lowes.com/? ?+91 99112 44209

Firefox 17 ESR, very hardened:

FREE SHIPPING ON QUALIFYING ORDERS $49 OR MORE
Lowe's Home Improvement Logo Link to Lowe's Home Improvement Home Page
Welcome to Lowe's
Find a Store
mylowes Sign in

LOT OF PICTURES AND OFFERS


Need Help?

Call 1-800-445-6937
Products & Sales

Call 1-877-GO-LOWES
----------------------------------------------

Looks OK to me. A DNS hijack maybe ?
[]'s

--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012

On 2/8/2017 5:36 AM, Shadow wrote:
On Tue, 07 Feb 2017 18:48:19 -0500, Paul
wrote:

Boris wrote:
Win7, 64-bit

This is happening in both Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers, when I
use Google as a search engine, and only when I Google "lowes" in the URL
box, and then select the first result, "Lowes Official Site". It doesn't
happen with any other search, for instance Best Buy or Home Depot.

This is what I see.

Lowes.com - Official Website
Ad www.lowes.com/? ?+91 99112 44209

Firefox 17 ESR, very hardened:

FREE SHIPPING ON QUALIFYING ORDERS $49 OR MORE
Lowe's Home Improvement Logo Link to Lowe's Home Improvement Home Page
Welcome to Lowe's
Find a Store
mylowes Sign in

LOT OF PICTURES AND OFFERS


Need Help?

Call 1-800-445-6937
Products & Sales

Call 1-877-GO-LOWES
----------------------------------------------

Looks OK to me. A DNS hijack maybe ?
[]'s


NO!! It was a paid advertisement that Google took down after I
complained in a feedback to Google.

--
David E. Ross
http://www.rossde.com/

Paraphrasing Mark Twain, who was quoting someone else:
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and
alternative truths.

On 02/07/2017 09:46 PM, Boris wrote:

[snip]

After installing AVG Free,I tried Firefox again, and this time, a Google
search didn't bring up "Lowe's - Official Site", it brought up "Lowe's Home
Improvement: Appliances, Tools, Hardware, Paint ...", as the first link.
When I hovered over this link, the status bar showed "www.lowes.com, and
nota google redirect. Hmmm...something has changed for the better.

I did a Google search for "lowes". Hovering over the first link shows
"https://www.lowes.com" on the status line. "Inspect object" shows a
complicated HREF that calls a Google page with an unexplained
"onmousedown". Once I've looked at that, hovering now shows the
complicated URL.

[snip]

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"When a clear head leads the way, a warm heart can safely follow." --
Marilyn Vos Savant

On Wed, 8 Feb 2017 07:35:28 -0800, "David E. Ross"
wrote:

On 2/8/2017 5:36 AM, Shadow wrote:
On Tue, 07 Feb 2017 18:48:19 -0500, Paul
wrote:

Boris wrote:
Win7, 64-bit

This is happening in both Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers, when I
use Google as a search engine, and only when I Google "lowes" in the URL
box, and then select the first result, "Lowes Official Site". It doesn't
happen with any other search, for instance Best Buy or Home Depot.

This is what I see.

Lowes.com - Official Website
Ad www.lowes.com/? ?+91 99112 44209

Firefox 17 ESR, very hardened:

FREE SHIPPING ON QUALIFYING ORDERS $49 OR MORE
............

LOT OF PICTURES AND OFFERS

.............
----------------------------------------------

Looks OK to me. A DNS hijack maybe ?
[]'s


NO!! It was a paid advertisement that Google took down after I
complained in a feedback to Google.

Ah, OK, sorry, answered to the first post then went off
somewhere and didn't read the follow-ups.
Bad that, Google should not be serving malware, but it's been
doing it for a while.
[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012

On Wed, 8 Feb 2017 07:35:28 -0800, David E. Ross wrote:
On 2/8/2017 5:36 AM, Shadow wrote:
[quoted text muted]

Looks OK to me. A DNS hijack maybe ?
[]'s


NO!! It was a paid advertisement that Google took down after I
complained in a feedback to Google.


Can we all just pause in awe for a moment?

Google actually responded to user feedback on a specific issue? Wow.
I'm not being sarcastic or anything, but I thought that never
happened.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

On Wed, 8 Feb 2017 12:41:41 -0600, Mark Lloyd wrote:

I did a Google search for "lowes". Hovering over the first link shows
"https://www.lowes.com" on the status line. "Inspect object" shows a
complicated HREF that calls a Google page with an unexplained
"onmousedown". Once I've looked at that, hovering now shows the
complicated URL.

[snip]

Startpage.com is my search engine for exactly that reason. It uses
Google's search engine, but hover over a link in the results and you
get the actual link. No advertising results either.

There's a widget to install it as a search engine in Firefox, which
is what I used. I'd be surprised if there weren't widgets for other
popular browsers.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

Stan Brown wrote:

Mark Lloyd wrote:

I did a Google search for "lowes". Hovering over the first link shows
"https://www.lowes.com" on the status line. "Inspect object" shows a
complicated HREF that calls a Google page with an unexplained
"onmousedown". Once I've looked at that, hovering now shows the
complicated URL.

Startpage.com is my search engine for exactly that reason. It uses
Google's search engine, but hover over a link in the results and you
get the actual link. No advertising results either.

ixquick's Startpage gets its results from Google; i.e., it submits your
search criteria to Google and then displays them to you but without the
tracking URL schema. This also means, however, that companies buying
sponsored ads as hits in Google's search engine will also be at the top
of ixquick's results. So, in a way, you still get the sponsored hits
first in the results list.

Unlike Google, ixquick does not use tracking in the links in the results
that it shows. It has deobfuscated the Google URLs to present only the
target site that Google buries in the parameters of its tracking URLs.

Another nice feature of ixquick is the use of their proxy. This means
the target site does not see that you came from Google when you visit
them. When using the proxy, the site doesn't get to see your IP
address. That's the point of using proxies for anonymity.

Rather than use cookies to remember your settings, they will let you
generate a URL to use their search engine with arguments that represent
your settings. You can save that special URL as a bookmark, shortcut,
or search engine setting (in your web browser or in the Windows registry
to use in the address bar of IE, Windows Explorer, or the address bar in
the Windows taskbar). That way, you can reuse the settings that you
like without having to save them into a cookie that you have to exclude
from any cleanup tool. Instead you save the settings for using their
site into the URL that you can save and reuse.

Because ixquick's StartPage uses Google's search engine, I get more
results and better focused results than when using DuckDuckGo.

Something you will lose when not using Google's search engine. For
example, you can specify operators in the search to alter for what you
search. One that I use often is "define:phrase". I have "g" setup as
a shortcut to Google's search and "sp" for ixquick's Startpage. Enter
"g define:inferno" and the first result is a dictionary definition.
Enter "sp define:inferno" and you get the same results as if you entered
"sp inferno".

When doing a search at Google, they will add images in their web search
results for YouTube so you can see a pic of the video before going
there. Search Google on "streets of fire" and then do it at Startpage.
Google will also present a right-side pane of the Youtube featured
video. Startpage just shows a simple text list of results.

Google will let you filter the results by a time range: any time, past
hour (*), past 24 hours, past week, past month, past year, and custom
range (*). The ones asterisked are not available at Startpage.

There are few sites (well, none so far) that I really care about Google
collecting logistics on what I searched on and on what I clicked. While
I still use StartPage (and DuckDuckGo) on occasion, most of the time I
use Google or Bing. If I don't trust Google and Microsoft to
non-personally record my searches and selections, why would I trust
anyone else? Yeah, ixquick and DuckDuckGo make their claims but I've
yet seen anyone attempt to test them. They are still recording on what
you search and obviously they know your IP address, too. They need the
logistics to improve their service, too. They are promising to protect
your privacy from the pages you visit (even more so if you use ixquick's
proxy), like from where you came (their search) when you visit a site,
and they do well at that. They also promise not to collect any
personally identifiable logistics about you (IP address, search
criteria) but then so does Google but they collect MORE information.