how to prevent start.iminent.com from hijacking start page?
I've successfully blocked cookies from iminent and blocked it from loading in firefox, using info from support.mozilla, but every several days firefox appears with a spontaneous, garish foreground window advertising iminent emoticons. The rectangle disappears when I seek "page info" about it or try to copy the small print at the bottom.
And I find that my start page has been switched to "http://start.iminent.com/?appId=27F7BB6C-B23D-48CD-9777-28568BBC2DCE" which won't actually load because it's my list of blocked sites.
How do I prevent iminent.com from hijacking my start page or ever getting into my computers?
Chosen solution
Your System Details List shows that you have a user.js file in the profile folder to initialize prefs each time Firefox starts.
The user.js file is only present if you or other software has created this file and normally it wouldn't be there. You can check its content with a plain text editor (right-click: Open with) if you didn't create this file yourself.
The user.js file is read each time Firefox is started and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session.
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Chosen Solution
Your System Details List shows that you have a user.js file in the profile folder to initialize prefs each time Firefox starts.
The user.js file is only present if you or other software has created this file and normally it wouldn't be there. You can check its content with a plain text editor (right-click: Open with) if you didn't create this file yourself.
The user.js file is read each time Firefox is started and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session.
I no longer have either a user.js file nor a profile folder in my Firefox 29.0.1 installation however this morning iminent appeared just as always with it's same "...spontaneous, garish foreground window.." advertising its childish content. And my home page was once again replaced by iminent's blocked site, leaving me with no effective home page and requiring me to take valuable time to fix it.
Anyone got a better idea how to deal with this trashy ad-man's idea of a cute break-in to a private computer??
You always have a Firefox profile folder.
You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:
- Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)
Thanks-- I found the hijacked user.js file, full of iminent references, and renamed it (wasn't aware that Windows Explorer Search function had to be explicitly told to search for Hidden files even when "Show Hidden Files" was set). Now I'll see if iminent again rears its ugly head. Don't seem to have this problem with Linux machines-- iminent never shows up??
But prefs.js also has a line: "user_pref("extensions.iminent.tlbrSrchUrl", "http://start.iminent.com/?ref=toolbarm#q=");" and many other references to iminent besides my blacklist spec. --does this mean I must reset to default state to get rid of iminent? And then reinstall AddOns and all other voluntary prefs?
Prefs that start with extensions.iminent. are always added by an extension, so you may or might have had an iminent extension that has added these prefs (prefs aren't removed/reset when you uninstall an extension) and you need to remove them yourself.