You must have a virus

Thank you, but I assumed that something was wrong & that, for lack of a better term, it was likely to be a virus/malware of some sort.

1) What to do about it?
My understanding is that Macs aren't generally liable to suchlike -- not only from it not being worth as much to 'the bad guys' for them to go after the smaller Mac market, but also, supposedly Macs are harder to infect/infest.
a) So what kind of virus checker or what would likely find, eradicate this in a Motorola G4 running OSX 10.4.11?
i) Having been without such for a long time, I am aware of Norton, Macaffee, Eset(lately advertising on the NPR radio), other? Is there a consensus or critical workup eg. in Macworld or whatever that would rate which are best, why, etc.?
ii) My understanding is since viruses etc. can't per se be algorithmically separated from good programs, that a constant 'history archive has to be maintained, accessed & implemented -- a constant, vs. single-time expense?

2) As may have mentioned, was notified that my Quicktime was 'out of date' & a possible source of significant risk/danger for eg. this kind of infection. But the update seems to require OS 10.5, which can't be installed on my Motorola Power PC Mac. Is the only solution to disinstall Quicktime -- which might also apply to other flash etc. readers?

edited by a moderator to fix the formatting

I have three computers. Each one uses McAfee Internet Security. Also, each computer, when running Firefox, has pages "hijacked" constantly. If I go to any page (it doesn't seem to matter where I go), suddenly I find myself at a random website that won't let me back out to get where I want to be. Many times it's a so called "security" site ("You may be infected with MalWare!!! Click Here!!!), but many times it's just some random site. I've removed Firefox from my computers and reinstalled. It works ok for a few days, then back to the same old thing. I'm ready to finally give up on Firefox...

Thanks, Tabman -- do appreciate. Have presently re-installed the Firefox browser(after clearing cache etc.) & so far it hasn't re-infested -- but tho am sorry to hear that you seem to have a version of what was going on w. me, its at least good to get another perspective.

So if/when I re-infest again -- failing some more general fix w. Firefox -- maybe will have to migrate to the Safari browser -- which seems to be more immune(possibly because it's not 'open source'? -- sad to think that!)

Do let me know if you have any more insights

cleared the leading line spaces that messed up the formatting of this posting

I'm curious which operating system thetabman is running on his 3 PC's? His problem sure sounds like a dose Windows Malware, to me.

Sorry, I can't help you with MacOSX problems (I run WinXP or Ubuntu on my PC's), but you should visit a Mac Users group for help and/or information about what type of exploits are being perpetrated against MacOSX users - Mac OS's aren't as safe today as they were like 5 years ago, they are being targeted by the bad guys, too.

My laptop is running Vista. My other two computers are running Windows 7 Premium. I have malware software installed, as well as McAfee.

thetabman,
Which Anti-Malware applications do you have installed? Are they up to date with the latest definitions? Some applications are better than others, and not every application will discover and remove all the garbage that is floating around out there. You should use the "correct" programs, in the order of their effectiveness as judged by a professional Malware "wrangler".

These are programs used by a professional who does support over at the MozillaZine fora, and the order she uses them on her customer's PC's.
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware - http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
SuperAntispyware - http://www.superantispyware.com/
AdAware - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
Spybot Search & Destroy - http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
Windows Defender from Microsoft

Good luck with cleaning up 3 PC's, that could be a big job.

Dear the-edmeis,
Do any of these work with the Mac OSX system in a way that would supplement it? Have contacted the ESET people, but unfortunately, while ESET will run on Leopard(which I haven't upgraded to from my OSX 10.4.11), they seem to indicate that it won't run on my Motorola(pre-Intel) machine(even with the OS upgrade -- which because of this, I haven't gottem).

Free OSX AV/AS: http://www.9to5mac.com/33479/sophos-ships-free-anti-malware-tool-for-macs (link to Sophos in article)

Others: http://www.macworld.com/article/155389/2010/11/mac_antivirus_sophos_eset.html