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I use Google Chrome, Chromium and Firefox for browsing on Ubuntu 14.04 and Chromium is my default browser.

Today when I started Chromium for searching a site from the Stack Exchange network I was redirected to an advertizing page called wonderlandads.com. The redirect occurred by clicking anywhere on the page, click and right click on any hyperlink and so on. But the redirect only occurred on Stack Exchange sites and no other sites. Also I saw this happening during browsing with Firefox but not when using Google Chrome.

Then I searched a found these two related posts:

  1. Redirect pop-up to wonderlandsads.com malware for webbrowsers
  2. How to remove wonderlandads from ubuntu chrome and firefox

Also I read more pages by searching in Google. But most of pages were in about Microsoft Windows. But I tried to do what I could (as those pages described):

  • Removing all extensions/addons
  • Resetting/Refreshing browser
  • Clearing all data (cache, cookies, history and ...)
  • I even removed and reinstalled Firefox

But this did not solve the problem.

Some things seem strange to me:

  • I did not use Firefox for a long time (about 3 months) until today for testing. How can it be affected when Google Chrome is not?
  • Why does it only redirect on Stack Exchange?

Finally, how to solve this problem?

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    Just some hints: Did you check if it is infected you router too? Note if you have synchronized your firefox/chromium account, that will probably reinstall the malware (somewhere they've seen it recognized as a toolbar add). Stop the synch, move e.g. the ` ~/.config/chromium/Default` and ` ~/.cache/chromium` in a safe place, purge (not only uninstall) chromium, and reinstall it. Do the same for firefox. Install ghostery and ABP and good luck. Let me know if it works.
    – Hastur
    Oct 14, 2016 at 14:19
  • after removing all suspected files with "adware remover" then sign out from my chrome and sign in again works for me thanks @Hastur
    – max
    Jan 22, 2017 at 18:07

1 Answer 1

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Glad to hear that your problem has been solved. It seems that many computer users have the same problem with wonderlandads malware. I encountered this annoying browser redirection on my Chrome a couple days ago and found a solution in this discussion and here:

  1. Open Task Scheduler: Run > taskschd.msc. Select Task Scheduler Library on the left panel.

  2. On the upper center panel you will see a list of scheduled tasks.

  3. On the lower center panel select Actions tab, it will show you which programs are launched by each task.

  4. Go through the scheduled tasks one by one and find which of them open chrome.exe and load some URL.

  5. Delete those tasks.

The steps above did the trick and I didn't need any security tool. Hope this helps.

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