Learn the unwanted facets of SafeFinder Smartbar and get easy-to-follow instructions on isearch.safefinder.net adware removal from major web browsers affected.

Looking for and installing an add-on to get your web browsing simplified or enhanced in one way or another might drag you into trouble these days. Software download resources out there, including popular ones, contain loads of ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’, figuratively speaking. Some extensions promoted as remarkable tools for everyday use turn out to be annoying and such that do not take user authorization seriously. In a worst-case scenario, these helper objects plainly violate your privacy by harvesting your sensitive online details. The app called SafeFinder Smartbar appears to come really close to the malicious edge, exhibiting the patterns that are characteristic of adware. The AV flagging of it as Adware.Linkury is a confirmation of said assertion (Linkury is the vendor name). The product’s marketing is nice and neat, boasting that the extension provides quick and easy access to sharing content on social networks, translating sites, verifying the security of a web page, uploading files, converting pages to PDF format, etc. What’s not stated in the clear, though, is that these benefits are a tradeoff in a deal that the user may not like.

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Users suffering from repeated redirects to default-search.net due to interference of the Linkey plugin can use this guide to learn how to get rid of the adware.

Adware has been trending in the cybercrime environment for the past few years, partially because it’s a relatively non-aggressive type of malicious software; and also, importantly enough, because it’s inherently associated with Internet advertising which is profitable and allows this corrupt business to flourish. The scheme that will be dissected in this article reflects the accomplice interrelation between a cross-browser plugin called Linkey and a purely malign browser hijacker known as Default-Search. The former entity by Aztec Media Inc. does not appear harmful at first sight – it is a free tool intended for quick and easy access to one’s favorite sites via handy controls. However, some of its installations have a built-in feature that the potential customers are not informed of, namely the forcible toggling of the browsing preferences on the computer.

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This article focuses on the unwelcome sides of BoBrowser adware and provides comprehensive tips to remove it and cease the browser hijacking it deploys.

Advertised as a highly secure and easy-to-use web browsing client, the BoBrowser application turns out to be not nearly as friendly upon a closer scrutiny. Some of its characteristics, such as the altering of one’s Internet surfing preferences, point to a malicious nature of this software that’s being obscured by its vendors.

The blurred delimitation of what’s legal on the Internet and what’s not is being heavily exploited by black hat people who masquerade their misdemeanors behind superficially nice services. As an example, BoBrowser is an Internet navigation client marketed to be “designed with security at its core”. The program has got a website of its own, where users can download it and review things like EULA, terms of service and privacy policy. Looks good thus far, but these are mere parts of a more despicable whole. If BoBrowser does get installed and launched, things are going to get noxious as far as web surfing is concerned.

First of all, even though this tool has its official page on the Internet (see snapshot below), it’s very rare that users download it from there. A much more productive proliferation technique, in BoBrowser makers’ opinion, is bundling with free utilities. Why? Because, regretfully, most people never end up reading the installation terms for whatever they install. Also, the promoters in this case are popular free apps such as video downloaders and multimedia players, which is something that significantly expands the adware’s prevalence patterns. To top it off, the logo of the unwanted program in question is akin to that of a reputable browser, and potential victims sometimes fail to tell the difference. Incidentally, the malign process is flagged by antiviruses as PUP.Optional.Clara.A, PUP.Installer.ClaraLabSoftware.M, etc.

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Figuring out why the Cinema-Plus application is an adware and the methodology for removing it from a computer is the subject being reviewed in this guide.

It’s not uncommon for adware infections to impact browsers in a way that web pages get displayed with ads that are not supposed to be there. Although the program called Cinema-Plus is installed by users as part of a new media player that’s free of charge, its foremost goal has little to do with multimedia. This virus displays sponsored objects inside whatever website the victim visits. So learn what this infection is and how it influences the functioning of a machine it found itself on.

It’s sort of naive to fully believe that after installing a random free application nowadays you will get precisely what’s promised in the product description. The actual implication of “free”, as far as software is concerned, has to have a commercial undertone. While some freeware developers out there can afford simply inserting advertisements into their app’s GUI, others venture to cross the borderline of ethics and earn by distributing malware in the bundle. A utility known as Cinema-Plus, for instance, relies on the latter monetization model. People do not really download and install it as a standalone app; instead, it’s just an extra item added to the installations of other solutions like media players or file downloaders.

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Wajam, an app with questionable reputation that unites web search enhancement and intrusive advertising activity, is being described in terms of removal.

Sometimes good ideas and startups end up transforming into abominable stuff that many people try to stay away from. Let’s look into Wajam, for instance. Officially, this application makes web search more informative by incorporating news from one’s friends on social networks into the results. The network of supported search providers includes Google, Yahoo, Bing, TripAdvisor, and Amazon. So, generally, this sounds okay as long as the declared objectives coincide with the reality. That’s where problems start to occur, though. When downloaded and installed, Wajam adds an extension to all major web browsers and then does more than just inserting some social networking data into the Internet searches – it also embeds above-the-fold ads which appear on top of your regular results. These sponsored links occupy quite a bit of page space and do not contribute to normal web surfing, to put it mildly. Another bad effect is somewhat longer web page loading times.

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Must-read information about what the BetterMarkIt app actually is and how this adware can be removed from an infected PC is at your fingertips in this article.

It’s amazing how substantially the marketing of a digital product can sometimes deviate from the factual state of things. Whereas the promotion of the BetterMarkIt application involves highlighting the all-positive features it supposedly delivers, what users get in the long run is frustrating activity being deployed on their computers. BetterMarkIt, also spelled BetterMarkit, is a browser extension known for displaying obnoxious ads in web pages rather than providing the officially declared capabilities. So, on the one hand, people might be lured by the alleged convenience from using this app due to enhanced online sharing, searching and text handling features. On the other hand, these benefits quickly fade in the face of the irritating sponsored information showing up literally everywhere the user goes on the Internet. Hyperlinked text fragments, popup ads, interstitials, price comparison sections and suchlike objects are going to occupy page space and lead to increased page load times.

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The article presents an extensive insight into intrusive Ads by Salus and the respective adware application, also providing effective removal steps as the fix.

Some samples of adware do nothing trickier than routing the victims’ web traffic to certain landing sites with ads. Others skip the redirect phase and display sponsored stuff directly inside all web pages that the compromised user goes to. Ultimately, the outcome is the same, but the tactic does differ. Speaking of the Ads by Salus infection, it is somewhat more complex than most of its counterparts. The peculiarity is in the way it gets into a random computer.

There exists a whole network of applications which are functionally non-related to virus activity but contain the adware as an inalienable component. These programs are called Salus Super Optimizer, Salus Internet Protector, Salus Net Protector and Salus MySafeProxy Super Optimizer. They are all free to use and they appear to even provide some features related to online security and system optimization, but the proliferation ways are awful. All of these utilities go with completely different software, where the installation wizards suggest users to also get the extra without bringing this fact onto the surface. The mentions of the bundled item are vague, inconspicuous and always integrated into the default (or express) setup, which is what most people stick to. Some of the spreader apps are Flash Player IE, VirtualDJ, FastPlayerPro, as well as some re-engineered builds of the Chrome browser and Java.

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Hao123, an intrusive homepage and default search hijacker, is getting scrutinized in this tutorial from a computer security and privacy perspective.

It’s doubtful whether one can question the legitimacy of the Hao123 service as such. It’s a portal created and run by the Beijing-based Baidu company; moreover it ranks very high on the worldwide Internet traffic map. The tip of the iceberg is it’s an aggregate of various web services (including web search, social networks, news, videos, games, finance, etc.) incorporated in one place. What does arouse serious concerns is one of the ways that this service has been progressing towards such a success. An app called Hao123-Client, when installed on an arbitrary computer, will forcibly change some web browsing preferences without proper approval on the user’s end. This affects the homepage settings as well as the default search, new tab and browser shortcut parameters. Resulting from such activity, much of the outgoing web traffic on the PC gets routed to hao123.com. This site is available in multiple languages, for instance the English version is at en.hao123.com.

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Why n10.adshostnet.com popups are malicious, as well as the simple how-to’s with regard to its removal, is the information readily available in this article.

There exist different kinds of adware applications, or PUPs (potentially unwanted programs), as they also tend to be referred to. Some of them insert advertising links directly into web pages, making it look like these objects belong there. Others hijack their victims’ web browsers by changing the custom settings such as homepage, search and new tab preferences. The infection called n10.adshostnet.com sort of blends the above features, with the final objective being pretty much the same – to promote third-party services or programs in an intrusive way. Whereas trying to find this particular entry among the installed add-ons or plugins is an unpromising activity, this threat get deeply incorporated in the browser configuration, thus seriously tangling the remediation of the changes it made to Chrome, Firefox or IE on the compromised computer.

Below is one of the screens that gets generated in the browser should the n10.adshostnet.com adware be inside. The user keeps receiving popups like this throughout their Internet browsing sessions. In this particular instance, the virus promotes an application called Open Download Manager, which may well be safe to use but definitely not something you need. That’s one of the best case scenarios, though. The programs being pushed through this technique may also include malicious code, so the PUP under consideration is, effectively, a universal malware distributor capable of dropping spyware, ransomware, banking Trojans and other nasty entities on a PC it infected.

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Exhaustive description and removal of Couponarific, an unwanted browser add-on which displays superfluous ads in web pages, are covered in this article.

Computer users who all of a sudden begin encountering ads by Couponarific on whichever websites they visit usually have no clue where these objects come from and why they keep showing up. This post is intended to explain the causes of said process, its outcomes for the PC and the measures which should be adopted to remedy the affected system. By its technical essence, Couponarific is an extension that’s compatible with the most popular web browsers, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and MS Internet Explorer. This little app is programmed to reconfigure the browsers on a machine so that banners, coupons, in-text ads and interstitial advertisements get displayed as part of the web pages accessed. The adverts can be signed “Brought by Couponarific”, “Ads by Couponarific” or “Couponarific Ads”.

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