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Hello all not sure if this is the right location to ask this but ive been dealing with a very troublesome browswer hijacker. Every time i load a web browser, firefox, chrome, or I.E. im immediately directed to www-mysearch.com. within seconds my screen is filled with obvious spam / trojan / virus pop ups. ive run a sweep with webroot and with another program called spybot and neither one can seem to stop it. a web search just pulls up countless not useful pages filled with the same generic info. i have deleted all programs installed on the date the virus appeared. I have reset the firefox browser settings. removed all extensions. Unfortunately i do not have a backup or restore point from prior to the security breach so that is not an option. Please, can someone who has dealt with this awful virus before tell me how they got rid of it? I feel like my computer has been taken hostage. Thank you in advance
Hi steveodelux

 

Welcome to the Community Forums.

 

What you are reporting is caused by a non-malware program we commonly refer to as a PUA or Potentially Unwanted Application.

 

These are very annoying at best in that they cause pop-ups, redirect your browser home page, and other behaviour that may slow down the computer and direct ads your way, but they are not actually doing anything bad like damaging files or stealing information. Often they are installed intentionally by you the user as browser add-ons for various tasks such as quick search tools. But they also come with the result of added annoying pop-ups and ads. Other times they 'piggy back' with other software that you installed, or try to 'sneak' onto your system entirely.

 

The key to avoiding them is to make sure that when downloading apps one does so from the author's own website or one that they have recommended, and not 3rd party downloading site.

 

WSA does detect and remove many PUA's, and more are being added, but WSA does not detect all of them. A simple browser add-on with PUA behaviour that is easy to identify and easy to remove is not likely to be detected and removed by WSA. Those that are intentionally difficult to locate and remove are. Please see THIS LINK for more information regarding Webroot's stance on these annoying programs.

 

To make sure that your WSA is checking for PUA's with the best proficiently, it sometimes helps to reset the PUA detection within WSA's settings. For PUA's that had previously been scanned and determined to be OK, but have since been added to detection/removal, you may want to complete the following steps:

 


  • Open Webroot SecureAnywhere
  • Click on ‘Advanced Settings’ from the top right
  • Select ‘Scan Settings’ from the left side
  • Unselect the option “Detect Potentially Unwanted Applications”
  • Click on the Save button (you may have to enter in a CAPTCHA)
  • Reselect the option to “Detect Potentially Unwanted Applications”
  • Click on the Save button
  • Run another scan with Webroot and remove any items that get detected.
If that does not helps and you feel or consider yourself technically proficient then you can try these steps to remove it from your system. This are generic steps and whilst they may assist from my research into this particular PUA it would seem that you best course of action would be to Open a Support Ticket & ask Webroot Support to take a look and remove these for you.  There is NO CHARGE for this for valid WSA license holder.

 

Hope that helps?

 

Regards, Baldrick

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