Hi victorialouise

 

Welcome to the Community Forums.

 

What you are seeing and describing is what you will find described on the Internet as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) or what we in the Community refer to as a PUA. (Potentially Unwanted Application.) These are very annoying at best in that they cause pop-us, redirect your browser home page, and other behavior 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.

 

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 behavior 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.

 

For those that are not detected by WSA, please see this KB Article. It has some easy to follow directions on locating and removing PUA's. You may also want to submit a Trouble Ticket, especially if you cannot remove it easily from the directions in the KB Article, or you do not feel technically proficient enough to do so yourself.

 

For those that ARE detected by WSA, but cannot be removed automatically, you can submit a Trouble Ticket.  Webroot Support will help you get these annoying 'crapware' off your computer at no extra charge, and the additional examples may help to better automatic removal of that particular PUA for all users in the future.

 

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.

To help avoid PUA's in the future, remember to read all of the information when installing or updating software (Adobe downloads often have those "extra special offers"attached... PUA'S!: often the PUA included will be mentioned, and you can opt out of installing it.  Those check boxes you see? Usually only one of them is for the User Agreement of the software you want, the others are for the junk you don't.

 

 I hope this helps you both understand, and resolve the problem and if not please let us know!

 

Regards, Baldrick

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@ wrote:

This is a PUP and not actually malware. It came preinstalled with some software you downloaded. You can find it add/remove programs and uninstall it. Scan with Webroot as described. Then reset your homepage and seach engine. 

You are quite correct that it is a PUA (as it is designated by Webroot or a PUP by others).Who actually said it was malware?  

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I thi kthat you will find that the user was informed by the information provided in my response post to their OP.  SOme people may be under that impression and some not...all that was asked was how could it be uninstalled.  As to being easily removed...some can and some are most tenacious in terms of removal...generalisations do not IMHO help anuone least of all the OP.

 

Regards, Baldrick

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Err...wrong thread, methinks...this is about .istart123.com...not the one about MS Office suite...

 

And BTW the link you posted is the one that I posted in my original reply to the OP in that thread (once Daniel had kindly pointed out that the link was malformed...and I have now corrected it/advised that this is so).

 

Baldrick

 

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Toolbars and PUPs should be higher on the removal list for WSA (mark more of them bad). ESET and Emsisoft do this. I understand it is easy to remove and there can be legal implications for doing so (marking them bad), but most users are inexperienced and need something (AV) to do something about all the 'crap' circulating around the internet. 90% of my customers don't know how to uninstall a program. Anyway, off subject...but just felt like giving my 2 cents ;P

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