WWTBAM Bored

The last two searches I have submitted to Google have come back with a "sorry" screen, saying these searches are similar to automated searches often submitted by virus or spyware spammers. I had to type in a security term to defeat the bots before they would return my results.

Those two searches were "Red Skelton" "pledge of allegiance" and google goggle.

Just on the off chance that my computer was infected with something, I then searched einstein feynman. No problems -- results returned right away.

Did I just hit two funky searches in a row, or is this a recent phenomenon?

Anyone?

I just googled "Red Skelton" with no problem.

Why would spammers need to make automated searches? Are these phrases used by a Captcha somewhere?

Most peculiar...

It just happened again, and my internet access has slowed way down. Starting to think I've picked up a baddy.

I'll reboot, run a spyware check, then try again.

mrkelley23 wrote:It just happened again, and my internet access has slowed way down. Starting to think I've picked up a baddy.

Uh oh. You may be right.

Good luck!

mrkelley23 wrote:The last two searches I have submitted to Google have come back with a "sorry" screen, saying these searches are similar to automated searches often submitted by virus or spyware spammers. I had to type in a security term to defeat the bots before they would return my results.

Those two searches were "Red Skelton" "pledge of allegiance" and google goggle.

Just on the off chance that my computer was infected with something, I then searched einstein feynman. No problems -- results returned right away.

Did I just hit two funky searches in a row, or is this a recent phenomenon?

Anyone?

Here is my paranoid theory. You have spyware of some kind on your computer that is using you as the human element to enter security terms on other sites to get past the security on those sites.

I did do the hover check on the url, because I had the exact same paranoid thought, and it APPEARED to be clean. It now appears to be system-wide, or at least school-wide, so I'm just going to find non-internet things to do today.

Thanks for the help and suggestions, Marley and tmitsss

You bad man.

It's your fault, I feel certain.

mrkelley23 wrote:It's your fault, I feel certain.

It always is.

mrkelley23 wrote:I did do the hover check on the url, because I had the exact same paranoid thought, and it APPEARED to be clean. It now appears to be system-wide, or at least school-wide, so I'm just going to find non-internet things to do today.

Thanks for the help and suggestions, Marley and tmitsss

I'll guess it's something the school installed on their firewall.

Just got an email back from one of the network gurus. He's blaming it on our ISP -- they say it's a common occurrence that happens because of the way we're assigning IP addresses. Something to do with a mask that Google's server sees more frequently from Spambots and virus junkies than from legit operations, so they throw up the sorry screen to filter out the bots.

I told our tech that I use Google heavily and have NEVER seen this message before today, so he's working on it with the ISP. We're apparently having other network issues today that could be contributing, so we'll see.