Rat feces. "Bing" redirect. "Search Marquis." I've looked at a few offered step-by-step solutions. So many damn steps. I don't have enough bread crumbs to find my way home.... Downloaded an antivirus tool. AVAST. It did not work. MALWAREBYTES detected some crap and quarantined it, but that did not remove the virus.
Evil, sub-human spunk-lickers do this sort of thing to other people.
I've got an appt. at the Apple Store. Always go in there only when I truly must. My other misadventure with this laptop involved a broken or corrupted update, one of Apple's own. Froze the damn computer. Their idea of "fixing" it was to erase everything, putting it back to factory specifications. ("Why shouldn't you be happy about that?!" Shit.)
Comments
I believe that I suggested this the last time also.
I’m afraid all of this points to growing sophistication on the part of the scammers.
I place the operating system and all associated system files onto one partition, and all other files (user files) are kept separate on the second partition. I generate a very large number of user files of all types, including data bases, spreadsheets, technical drawings, and of course lots of graphics files- primarily pictures. All of this has been accumulating for some 25 years, so there's lots of stuff, and there's no way that I can afford to lose all of that.
Malicious damage is most likely to affect the operating system. By keeping the OS separate from the user files, even if the OS is compromised it is extremely unlikely to cause any damage to the user files.
Weekly, I back up both hard drive partitions onto a small external portable hard drive. That portable drive is then taken to our weekend house, where it is copied onto another computer, so then there are two potential backup systems.
Should the computer drive become compromised, or even totally fail due to a physical failure, very little will be lost. With respect to physical failure, keep in mind that a hard drive is a motor-driven set of stacked magnetic discs, with a set of small arms (think of a phonograph arm) which is constantly moving extremely rapidly back and forth over the discs.
In short, a disc drive is a very hard-working piece of hardware with several rapidly moving parts, with bearings which wear. They can and do sometimes just totally fail from wear and tear.
If your computer is used for serious work, or contains user files which you really don't want to lose, then backing it up is like wearing a seat belt while driving- cheap insurance. Why someone who had experienced such a loss wouldn't bother to do anything to help prevent more of the same is very difficult for me to understand.
* Must add here that all files are kept current on at least 3 separate Apple devices. Wouldn’t sleep well if it weren’t for that 3rd level of backup.