Underlined words in webpages adware? 1

[Loktar]

Recently I've been noticing that on some websites I've visited certain key words are underlined and have become hyperlinks. Hovering over them pops up a little ad blurb that tells you information on where the link will take you (supposedly, I havn't clicked one). I think I rememeber some sort of adware that did this, but I've run AdAware and Spybot both with new reference files and they come up clean. (At first there were some things they found, mostly cookies tho.)

I was wondering if this has become a way for websites to advertise, such as banners etc. or if there's some annoying software hiding on my machine. It's on a work machine that I just recently started using so I'm not sure what the old user might have done to it.

Also, a reason I thought it might be ligit advertising is because it only happens on a few sites... although not consistently.

Anyone seen something like this before? The words are olive green with a double underline.

Thanks in advance...

 

[zbnet]

Does

http://www.siterightnow.net/AdWare.html

help?

 

[bcastner]

Some sites do this on purpose, but the first thing to do is to remove the possibility it is malware.
zbnet's comment above is perfectly apt, you need to run at least one and perhaps more checks on your system.

See FAQ608-4650

 

[Loktar]

Thanks for the link.

I'm thinking that these underlined words must be a way that some sites I visit advertise. Even though they are respectable sites and would never host malware that could attach itself to a users computer, they are free and fan supported and I know some of them are in need of all the money they can get.

Thanks for the heads up though. For now I'll just let it slide and hope it doesn't get worse.