Start.com as my homepage after installation on my new OSX

jogi99
I did a new install of Zotero.

Suddenly I had mystart.com as my homepage after installation on my new OSX.

In my research it seems that this page indicates that there is hardware involved. I just finished setting this computer up and in case there is real malware I would go as far as reinstalling OSX and starting over.

Please give me an indication if it is normal to have the homepage in my browser taken over after installing Zotero, and if other things were happening in the background as well?
  • adamsmith
    Zotero won't touch your browser's homepage, this does indeed sound like malware (entirely unrelated to Zotero). I'm assuming you're actually seeing max-start.com, not start.com? That's an ad-redirect page, so it's not particularly dangerous malware, but malware nonetheless. You can easily google instructions on how to remove it.
  • jogi99
    Actually it was "mystart.com" by Intellibar.

    This is a installer company that packages existing programs so that in the end lots of malware lands on your computer. It loads it by itself.
    Changing the homepage is only one very, very tiny fraction of what software like this can do to your computer.
    I had it once on PC it is a nightmare and hard to trust a machine that once had it, because you never know if it did not send your passwords back to the server.

    Well, on that day I did only install silverlight and zotero, so I thought probably the Installer of zotero was flawed.

    I only got software that I knew, so I am very surprised by this.
  • dstillman
    My guess is that either the malware was already on your system or you downloaded an installer (Silverlight, say) from somewhere other than its official source. In any case, there is zero chance this came from zotero.org.
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited May 28, 2014
    Dan's message was posted while I was drafting my post, below. (edit)

    What was the site from which you downloaded Zotero? Silverlight? If you used a third party site then that site may be the source of the malware. The program you downloaded itself may be fine but it may have been accompanied by an unannounced "helper" application.

    If you don't have security software installed you my have visited a website that contained an advertisement that installed the malware -- clicking on the ad is not necessary for it to do its damage.

    Microsoft Security Essentials (free from Microsoft) does a very good job preventing this kind of infection and it "plays nice" with Zotero. It is what I have used for several years. The anti-malware program should be downloaded directly from the Microsoft website and not from less trustworthy sites that offer products from many developers.

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