I use Ubuntu 18.

For years I have used Firefox.

Lately, when I try to call baidu.com, the Chinese search engine, it often times out.

I thought, "There's no way the Chinese government is blocking Baidu! Maybe it's my internet connection?"

I installed Chromium.

baidu.com opens no problem in Chromium.

Now the funny part: I have a little webpage for giving homework and, because of the virus, also online class sometimes.

This morning, I opened my webpage in Chromium, everything OK.

Around lunchtime, I noticed that the font on my webpage had become some strange digital type font, hard to read.

I did not change any settings in Chromium, at least not that I know of.

I opened my webpage with Firefox. Everything normal.

How can the webpage font suddenly change in Chromium, without my input?

(I installed Opera now. Opera looks nice, and my webpage displays normally.)

it may depend on the settings (of the browser). I guess a javascript (or similar) can do anything, any time on its page (without hacking the browser).

I've seen this happen when a browser that's statically linked against FreeType gets updated to a version that's dynamically linked against FreeType (or vice versa).

Edit.

Where did I get that reply from?

Thank you all for your replies!

I found the culprit!

Yesterday, I didn't close Opera all day. But at some stage, I think I tried to make Baidu my default search engine!

Opera has a tab: Speed Dial, very nice, add links to the webpages you use frequently, open a new tab, click! Great!

Opera comes with some commercial links, Amazon, Kayak, others.

This morning, when I opened Opera, I found a whole raft of Chinese links there.

Also, 搜狗 Sugou, a Chinese search engine, had installed itself as the default search engine.

Where does Opera keep its config??

Where does Opera keep it's config??

I could not remove Sugou, I could not change to another default search engine.

In China, I can't use Google without the VPN on, so I use Bing

I uninstalled Opera.

Now, I cannot even add Bing as search engine. The Add button is disabled.

Sugou must have left a script somewhere. So, even though I removed and reinstalled Opera, I'm stuck with this invasive Chinese shit!

Where are the settings, the .config file for Opera browser in Ubuntu??

It gets worse:

I used:

sudo snap remove --purge opera

to uninstall Opera, then I reinstalled it with snap

When I opened Opera, everything was OK, except the search engine was set to Google, which is hard to use in China.

So I set it to Bing.

That doesn't seem to take immediate effect, so I closed Opera, then opened it again.

All the Chinese shit back again, Sugou my default browser, unable to change that, unable to add another search engine!

Where are the Chinese hiding this config script on my hd??

I ran

sudo snap remove --purge opera again

In my home folder, I have a folder snap. It contains a folder opera, with configuration data for Opera browser. I deleted it and emptied the trash.

I reinstalled Opera with snap

I open Opera, it looks good, except, I cannot add a search engine. The window opens, but the Add button is disbled.

I set Bing as default search engine. No change, Google is still the default search engine.

I close Opera and open it again.

All the Chinese shit back again, Sugou my default browser, unable to change that, unable to add another search engine!

Where are the Chinese hiding this config script on my hd??

A web search for "Sugou browser hack" turns up a number of articles about this. Apparently Sugou has a less than stellar track record.

This was the first one in the search results: https://botcrawl.com/how-to-complete...press-toolbar/

Norton reports that botcrawl is "safe."

1 members found this post helpful.

Well, it was my fault for trying Baidu as default search engine.

I should have just put a link in the Speed Dial tab!

Still struggling to get rid of this.

I just tried deleting the browser.js file in the folder

/home/pedro/snap/opera/113/.config/opera/

I also opened

default_partner_content.json

This file had some nasty red marked illegible code stuff at the top. I deleted that.

Also siteprefs.json I deleted the entire contents.

Then I closed Opera and reopened.

browser.js is back, but the default search engine was still Bing.

However, the default_partner_content.json had that nasty red code at the top again.

I'd like to know where the Chinese hid their stuff!!

Looks like Opera IS the hack:

From opera.org forum:

Thanks for the update and solution.

Now where do they make Opera at?

China????

As a pleasant end to this story:

I purged Opera, got Vivaldi. Vivaldi is very nice!! I can recommend it!