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  • December 25, 2014
  • 1 reply
  • 20 views

I'm suddenly inundated with ads, mainly Snipsmart.  Ran a scan but no improvement.  What should I do?  I have Webroot Scan Anywhere Anti virus.

1 reply

Baldrick
Gold VIP
  • Gold VIP
  • December 25, 2014
Hi mtwalls
 
A Yuletide Welcome to the Community Forums.
 
From the research I have done it appears that SnipSmart is an adware program, that displays pop-up ads and advertisements on web pages that you visit.  It is an adware 'infection' that is designed specifically to make money, but having said that it is a non-malware program we commonly refer to as a PUA or Potentially Unwanted Application.
 
As you have noticed by now these are very annoying at best in that they cause pop-us, 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.
 
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.
 
The best advice that I can give you is that you Open a Support Ticket and ask Webroot Support to take a look and remove these for you.  There is NO CHARGE for this for valid WSA license holder.
 
Also, we have had a lot of discussion regarding these recently, and one of our gurus @ has posted an Idea for Webroot to consider asking them to increase PUA detection.  The more users that need help removing a particular PUA the more likely and faster that PUA will be added to detection.
 
I hope this helps?
 
Regards, Baldrick