02-15-2009, 09:03 PM

Hi All, my mother-in-law has a curious problem with her Mac (an older iMac still on Panther). When she points her Firefox browser at Google, it goes to Google (Spanish). She doesn't know how this happened and doesn't read Spanish, so this is a real problem for her.

I seem to recall some back there was a bit of malware going around that caused this sort of thing, and that it was fairly easy to remove. Does anyone remember? Something to do with hijacking DNS resolution...

Aside from that, does anyone know how I might go about ensuring that Google arrives at Google, not Google

Thanks!

02-20-2009, 10:34 AM

Hi Folks, just a quick update for anyone who read this and didn't know the answer. It turns out that this is a widely know fault of Google's!

First of all, the virus I was looking for is called DNSChanger. Lots of info on it out there on the web if you are interested. My mother-in-law's computer didn't have it thankfully.

What was happening is that Google examines your IP address, tries to determine what part of the world that address is from, and then whisks you to the page for that region. Unfortunately, with the world running out of IP addresses, I guess the mapping of IPs to regions doesn't work so well anymore, and Google frequently takes you to places you don't want to.

To fix it, force it to English via "www.google.com/intl/en/" and then bookmark that page. This allows you to always force the issue and that more or less resolves it. It did for my MIL anyway (actually, my ex-MIL, for those of you up on the soap opera that is my life).

Just thought I would let you know!

02-20-2009, 04:08 PM

Thanks Mac! Useful info, I've gotten stuck on the UK version of Google a few times, I'm from the states. Once I cleared my cookies it was okay though.