The plague of Script.Clickbubbles.net

[9thdoctor]

In the last couple days my OL browsing has been marred by constant crashes coinciding with a new feature: random words are underlined, and when the cursor touches the word a popup appears with a link to a commercial site. The most common one is particularly funny, the word “love” becomes a link, offering the chance to start “Looking for love” on Cheapstuff.com. Also, “free” links to Groupon.net. Double entendres abound. I originally switched to Firefox because IE became too unstable, now, all of a sudden Firefox is as bad or worse.

When I click on a thread it opens, then at the bottom of the page it says it’s getting data from Script.ClickBubbles.net, then the words become underlined. Maybe half the time the browser crashes at this point, which I can’t have happening to me (other, more important stuff is going on in the other tabs).

Is anyone else having this problem? I ran Malwarebytes and it didn’t find anything. I googled Script.Clickbubbles.net and found one page (only one) where people where talking about it, and suggesting how to stop it. This is mainly happening on discussion boards (OL, SLOP, and OO), not on Wikipedia or CNN.

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/780435

[Robert Campbell]

ND,

Are you a Windows user?

I'm strictly a Mac user, most often browsing with Firefox, and I haven't encountered any of this misbehavior while browsing OL.

Robert Campbell

[9thdoctor]

ND,

Are you a Windows user?

I'm strictly a Mac user, most often browsing with Firefox, and I haven't encountered any of this misbehavior while browsing OL.

Robert Campbell

Windows desktop, yes. I also use an Iphone, which uses Safari, no problem there.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dennis,

I just bobbed around Google and what I saw impressed me. This script seems to be getting into the actual SERP text in the descriptions provided by Google.

I have little doubt some very big guns are going to shoot this down before too long.

I am now using the latest version of Firefox 4 and I don't have this issue. I also use Web of Trust for browsing, but from what I have seen, this thing is bigger than malicious websites.

If you are not running Firefox 4, I suggest you install it. In one of the comments I read on the Mozilla forum, a poster said he resolved this issue by doing that.

Let's see what happens. I will keep my eyes peeled and post something as soon as I know more.

Michael

[9thdoctor]

If you are not running Firefox 4, I suggest you install it. In one of the comments I read on the Mozilla forum, a poster said he resolved this issue by doing that.

I tried that, it didn't stop it and the number of crashes went way up after that. I was using 3.6x. I'm trying Opera, but I hate having to fiddle around getting it to look and work the way I want. I'm not getting the ClickBubbles on Opera, yet.

[9thdoctor]

Come to think of it, when "Bing" first appeared it behaved the same way, though I don't remember it causing crashes. I don't see Bing popups anymore.

[william.scherk]

Is anyone else having this problem? I ran Malwarebytes and it didn’t find anything.

I use and recommend Chrome. I can crash anything, but if I crash a page in Chrome, just that page dies off, the browser lives on, and re-instantiating the crashed page reinstantiates any text I might have been typing in a text box. Not perfect, Chrome, but clean and fast.