ebay.com changes to ebates.com

[scotty-g]

Lately, whenever I open Chrome or IE and type in ebay.com the browser URL changes to https://www.ebates.com/ebay_3993-xfas?special=12111053&eeid=38386&utm_source=ebates&utm_medium=email...

before changing back to www.ebay.com.

Does not happen in Firefox - or it is too fast for me to see.

Anyone else seeing this and how do we make it stop?

I do not have a ebates account but am concerned about the changing URLs.

[1786davycrockett]

Try typing in My eBay or Myebay -- that should do it.

So far as I know, eBay and ebates are two different companies, unrelated to each other.

[scotty-g]

Nope, that did not work on Chrome.

Still went to ebates link before going to ebay.

[1786davycrockett]

Since it sounds as if you can still get to eBay, even though you are briefly shown the URL for ebates, I'm not sure that there is a problem.  I often see different URLs popping up when I am entering the first few letters of a word -- no big deal, as long as the URL shows up eventually for the site for which you are looking.  

[berserkerplanet · Accepted solution]

That has nothing to do with eBay and is a browser issue. Might be indicative of adware/malware in the browser redirecting you for them to scam click dollars or somesuch (but I thought Chrome was supposed to be resistant to that?)

Possibly could be a computer OS level DNS redirection infestation

Run antivirus/antimalware scans. Can't help with further diagnosis as I don't run Chrome.

In Firefox I'd fire up an addon called HTTPFox that logs all inbound/outbound requests inside the browser to see the sequence of events, and domains involved, and proceed from there. If nothing appeared to be occurring internally, I'd move to Fiddler, Smartsniff, Wireshark or other packet sniffer external to the browser to see what was being sent and from where. Also helps to be familiar with your system and look often for things running that shouldn't be using Windows Taskmanager

Not at all raising an alarm and saying your browser or machine are infected, but from the little detail you provided it sounds like a possibility if I read what you were saying correctly.

One clarification: are you saying the browser URL changes to ebates from abay before you press the enter key or click to load (ala autocomplete), or that you click to load, an ebates page loads, and then after a few seconds loads the eBay homepage?

[scotty-g]

Thank you. Will try later this afternoon. 

What happens is that I type in ebay.com and hit enter.

Then the computer "thinks" for a second and the URL changes to ebates for ~2 seconds and seems to try and load a web page before changing back to ebay.com and loading that web page.

Other web pages load faster - Amazon, Yahoo, Netflix all load faster too and I don't see redirects when I type in their addresses.

[mr_lincoln]

@scotty-g  Clear cookies, history, temp internet file, etc. then try again.

[scotty-g]

Scan completed and nothing tell tale but several things were "fixed" and it does not seem to be an issue now. THANK YOU!

[berserkerplanet]

Cool!