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Google Books Downloader - WARNING - contains search hijack "arccosine.com"

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IainB:
Just a quick warning about this.
I'm using Firefox 12.0 ß, but this problem may also occur with IE (according to a Mozilla Support thread, referred to below).

Out of interest, I downloaded and installed Google Books Downloader, having seen a reference to it in a blog post (Codeplex daily summary - http://www.codeplex.com/) in my feed aggregator.
The download site is/was: https://googlebookdownloader.codeplex.com/releases/view/84266

The proggie did what it claimed to do - copied previews of books to .PDF - which unfortunately wasn't of much use as you are still frustrated  by Google's removing pages from all previews.

Then I noticed that my home page and also my default Google search page had been hijacked by a search page which was imitating Google, with a pretty seascape background (see copy in spoiler):
Spoiler
The ruddy thing wouldn't go away.

So, I de-installed Google Books Downloader and googled the problem, coming up with a useful Mozilla Support thread at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/850780

The hijack is persistent and comes from the website 'arccosine.com' and wants you to "sign up" for something.
I did a 'Whois' on arccosine.com, and it is hosted in the Russian Federation. (That figures.)

Fix:
I deleted all references to "arccosine" (i.e., 2x "C"s) and "arcosine" in history, just in case.
I checked in the 'about:config' entry for 'keyword.URL' and reset that back to "Default" - it had been set to 'arccosine.com,q=' by the hijack proggie Google Books Downloader (in the discussion thread someone writes that if you examine the proggie's code, you can see where it does that).

Hope this helps someone to avoid the thing.

KynloStephen66515:
you forgot to upload the image attachment : :(

[ ERROR: SPECIFIED ATTACHMENT MISSING ]
--- End quote ---

wraith808:
Did you post a comment/report the project?  Because the source that's checked in pretty much does nothing, so its a misdirection...

I'm posting something about the source, but as I don't have experience with the binary, wouldn't post that.  I'd suggest going to http://googlebookdownloader.codeplex.com/releases/view/84266 and posting your experiences...

Update: Posted two issue tracker items and a review about the source code doing nothing.  I also sent a support e-mail to the Microsoft team over the site.

IainB:
you forgot to upload the image attachment : :(
[ ERROR: SPECIFIED ATTACHMENT MISSING ]
--- End quote ---
-Stephen66515 (March 19, 2012, 06:21 PM)
--- End quote ---
Crikey, that was fast!
Five nanoseconds after I had posted it!     ;D
Fixed now. Thanks.

IainB:
Did you post a comment/report the project?  Because the source that's checked in pretty much does nothing, so its a misdirection...

I'm posting something about the source, but as I don't have experience with the binary, wouldn't post that.  I'd suggest going to http://googlebookdownloader.codeplex.com/releases/view/84266 and posting your experiences...
-wraith808 (March 19, 2012, 06:25 PM)
--- End quote ---
Thanks! Good idea. I hadn't thought of doing that, supposing Codeplex to be a Wild West Frontier. Could be useful to others, I suppose.

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