How do you get your mac to stop redirecting?

Answer 1

Well, you could have 1 of 3 problems. I will not bore you with a bunch of "fancy Tech gibberish," instead I will offer the solutions to these problems. You may try one or all of these in any order, but I suggest you try them in order, as I have arranged them according to the most likely problem and the best solution. *Please note that a virus is also always a possible answer. However, viruses are usually not very popular in Mac software.

Knowing that:

Solution 1

If you are experiencing "pop-up ads" as well as your redirecting problem (and in some cases even if you're not) then you have a quick and simple fix. Just Google search either Firefox Ad Blocker or Safari Ad Blocker (depending on your preferred internet browser) and install the software. This should only take a few seconds and works quite well. If the ads persist, close out of any you see and refresh the page. This should solve both your pop-up ad problem and you redirecting problem.

Solution 2

In the event that you already have Ad Blocker software, solution 1 did not work, or your browser is redirecting too much to try solution 1, you can take the long way there. First open the Go to Folder in Finder and type /etc in the box. Then click on the Hosts file. This should open a Text Edit document that looks something like this:

##

# Host Database

#

# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface

# when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.

##

127.0.0.1 localhost

255.255.255.255 broadcasthost

::1 localhost

fe80::1%lo0 localhost

Delete anything above or bellow that and "save as..." (not save, it wont let you do that) as hosts (get rid of the .txt at the end) and save to the desktop. This should stop your Mac from redirecting, but if you don't already have Ad Blocker software I suggest you also follow step 1 again to keep this problem (and several others) from reoccurring in the future.

Solution 3

If you already have Ad Blocker software and your Hosts file looks exactly like the one shown above (with nothing extra above or bellow it) then you might simply need to update your Mac. This can be a short or long process depending on when you last updated and what updates are newly available. After your update you Mac should be good as new. If the problem is still there you can try updating the browser you're using (ie. Firefox or Safari) as updating your Mac is a separate process.

If your Mac is STILL redirecting after all of that, then you may have a virus (as mentioned above) or you have a different software problem than the one this article was written to fix. If this is the case I suggest either calling Tech Support (and trying to be REALLY patient) or searching the internet (if you can) for other ways to solve the problem. You could always try posting a description of your specific problem here and I will try to help you, but I apologize in advance if I can't. (There's a lot of stuff I know, but there's much more I don't. That's why they make people smarter than me ;)