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Joyce Valenza

iGoogle: A hijack warning
February 16, 2008

I am feeling very guilty.

This morning my iGoogle homepage appeared to be hijacked. It automatically redirected me to sitesure.com, a site that seems to be related to Network Solutions. I felt awful after raving about iGoogle and its lovely new themes earlier this week.

After searching frantically for a solution, using Yahoo! and good old standard Google, I discovered that other folks were suffering. I discovered a fix that works for now.

If this happens to you, you might have downloaded a gadget associated with the expired site. For many, it seems that the offending gadget is This Day in History.

Here's what to do:

Click on the X, or the browser Stop icon, before the iGoogle page has a chance to redirect.
Delete (or click the X on) the This Day in History gadget.

Network Solutions, the registrar for SiteSure, says the problem has to do with embedded browser code connected to the expired site. A statement will be released on the Network Solutions site shortly. This Day in History may be associated with the expired SiteSure. I am not sure which other gadgets are connected. Network Solutions also suggests clearing your browser's cache.

I guess the no-fun lesson in all this is an old one. Be careful what you download.

Posted by Joyce Valenza on February 16, 2008 | Comments (4)

February 16, 2008
In response to: iGoogle: A hijack warning
Andrew Kiefer commented:

Thanks for the fix

February 16, 2008
In response to: iGoogle: A hijack warning
poet_soldier commented:

Listen: Thank you for detemrining that it was the this day in history plug-in. Following your directions *finally* fixed the problem for me. Thanks!

February 16, 2008
In response to: iGoogle: A hijack warning
Missi Baker commented:

I had trouble with the homepage theme I downloaded one time. The Google group for IGoogle helped me out. And, yes, I am often guilty of downloading "fun" widgets, etc.!

February 17, 2008
In response to: iGoogle: A hijack warning
nsfreak commented:

yes, yes.. we've been recieving tons of calls from customers about that sitesure thingy.. good think they've reactivated the domain name for a limited time while giving the owner of the site time to renew the said domain name. so now if you pull up sitesure.com it pulls up w/ it's recent contents. hell yeah, 1500+ abandoned calls is no joke, plus first-time callers complaining and thinking that netsol has something to do w/ it, it just so happens that it's pulling up w/ a notice/advertisement that the domain name expired and needs to be renewed. poor legitimate customers waiting while on hold for hours. good thing that's over!