492991 - firefox vunerablility to searches being redirected to be displayed by "search.conduit.com."

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[acmeinc00]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5

I am posting this as a bug because I have encountered this problem through two of your software updates and the reason I use your browser is because its supposed to be less susceptible to this kind of thing.
I use Internet Explorer in conjunction with Firefox and it only affects Firefox. The redirect happens about every 2 out of 5 searches and changing search engines doesn't seem to affect it. I even get redirected sometimes when I am reloading a browser window to refresh it, say my weather page for example, so it isn't only a search problem. Searches do consistently produce the redirect though. I even switched to the Ixquick search engine and it didn't seem to help.

I have not found any online directs to help with this problem, but I will keep checking, but this would be a good one to engineer away from.

When the redirect happens, the load time for the browser page goes up by 10 times or more and locks up all Firefox windows and tabs until the redirect page loads.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.do a search
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
I have not been able to reproduce the problem by cutting a pasting the link i sent you. I get a "Server is too busy" message. Somehow a command has gotten embedded somewhere that initiates the redirect. And once it does the redirect is way too repeatable.

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

One of the links in this search goes to http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=641296&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
Does the advice (like creating a new profile) work?

Comment 2

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Reporter, could you please give us feedback?

Comment 3

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Please reopen if you still see this bug in the latest firefox version.