[Unconventional Guide] Browser Hijacking and Methods of Prevention

Browser hijacking is a danger in the form of unwanted activities that changes the browser’s settings without any permission from user, injects undesirable advertising. It comes under action by adopting several methods such as by replacing home page or search page of browser with its own. This is usually done to force the website traffic to particular URL, increasing revenue.  It arrives into many forms like flooding of pop ups strikes the user after mistyped address or unwanted code taking over the browser window.

Browser Hijacker may disable the installed antivirus and anti-spyware programs of browser and run ActiveX scripts from web page and will appear via popup to install them on browser. If accidentally these programs gets permitted than browser will install the program on workstation, by changing all settings. Unless making changes to the home page, the hijacker may also do other changes to hosts files that are used to maps the web URLs to IP addresses. Every time the user typed any URL, the user might be redirected to the faulty web sites.

Sometimes the hijackers also install some legitimate programs, modify the entry in “add-remove programs” in control panel.

Methods of Browser Hijacking Prevention

• Install anti-virus and anti-spyware software’s and turn on the option called potentially unwanted programs.
• Keep the third party software always up to date.
• Use cautions while downloading or installing freeware.
• Keep automatic updates of browser and operating system on.
• Install real-time software’s such as WinPatrol.
• Freeze the ActiveX settings.

Methods of Browser Hijacker Removal

• Check the settings of Addons Manager of browser, check all addons and extensions, if anything find wrong, uninstall it.
• If the case of default page hijacked than the user simply revert all the settings, via browser settings. If it finds more serious, then maybe the host file could have been hijacked, than resets the hosts file.
• Delete the DNS Cache.
• Reset the browser settings.
• When the user have done all then, simply FULL-SCAN the PC.

Removal Tools of Browser Hijacker

• WinPatrol: It’s a useful freeware that will alert the user when any change is scanned and helps to remove the malicious browser helper objects.
• Adwcleaner: It’s a portable tool that scans potentially unwanted programs as well as browser hijacker by blocking access to some undesirable websites.
• Alert: It’s a browser integrity and intrusion detection tool that alerts the user while performing financial and banking transactions and keeps the system aware of banking trojans.