Prize-Party.com is a browser hijacker that targets Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers. It is able to compromise your web browser and change your default search engine and homepage without your permission. As soon as it invades the target computer, it changes the settings of your browser, which include default search page changing, homepage changing. Besides, when you attempt to open your browser and surf online, the URL will keep redirecting to Prize-Party.com without your permission. This hijacker is designed to boost traffic to a specific website in order to get profit from that.
Its malicious activities can totally make users crazy. When you try perform a search on the Internet, you will end up visiting Prize-Party.com instead of your request. This page states that you can win great prizes without much effort. It lists many attractive prizes such as Iphone, Ipad, Macbook etc. If a user believe them to be true and click the prize, he or she will be redirected to a fake Facebook sign in page. Under such circumstances, your personal information and privacy could be dangerous because this nasty thing is able to collect information about your browsing habits, such as browsing history and other data which can be used for marketing purposes. Furthermore, it may add unwanted toolbar to your browser and notably slow down your PC performance. Generally it enters computers bundled with other programs and mostly it comes together with some freeware programs that one can download from the Internet. Check carefully before you download a program and it is necessary for users to get rid of Prize-Party.com redirect once it is found.
1. It can redirect you to malicious websites with numerous pop up ads to interrupt and stop you from doing anything on your computer;
2. It can turn your computer to run slowly and pose sudden death;
3. It can introduce more unwanted viruses and Ransomware to do further harms;
4. It can help cyber criminals track your online activities and capture significant personal data to cause you a loss of value.
5. It can change your default DNS configuration and block you accessing your favorite sites.
6. It forcibly customizes the default homepage, search engine and bookmarks of your computer.
Prize-Party.com redirect may be installed if a computer user has ever visited illegal or malicious websites or downloaded freeware or shareware from untrustworthy sources. It can cause annoying redirection to disturb users. This problem happen when you use Internet explorer, Mozilla Firefox, even Google Chrome to browse online. Being as a redirect virus, it keeps tracking of computer users’ online activity and causing web browser to display unwanted advertisements and pop-up windows. It poses huge risk for all the computer systems. If you have been forced to visit those unwanted websites against your authorization, particularly for this domain, you must immediately remove Prize-Party.com as soon as possible in order to secure your computer.
Considering this malware can’t be fixed by any security tools, uses can use the manual guide below to fix this issue without any risk.
1. Clear all the cookies of your affected browsers.
Since tricky hijacker virus has the ability to use cookies for tracing and tracking the internet activity of users, it is suggested users to delete all the cookies before a complete removal.
Google Chrome:
Click on the “Tools” menu and select “Options”.
Click the “Under the Bonnet” tab, locate the “Privacy” section and click the “Clear browsing data” button.
Select “Delete cookies and other site data” to delete all cookies from the list.
Internet Explorer:
Open Internet explorer window
Click the “Tools” button
Point to “safety” and then click “delete browsing history”
Tick the “cookies” box, then click “delete”
Mozilla Firefox:
Click on Tools, then Options, select Privacy
Click “Remove individual cookies”
In the Cookies panel, click on “Show Cookies”
To remove a single cookie click on the entry in the list and click on the “Remove Cookie button”
To remove all cookies click on the “Remove All Cookies button”
2. Remove all add-ons and extensions
Google Chrome: Wrench Icon > Tools > Extensions
Mozilla Firefox: Tools > Add-ons (Ctrl+Shift+A)
Internet Explorer: Tools > Manage Add-ons
3. Show hidden files and folders.
Open Folder Options by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Folder Options.
Click the View tab.
Under Advanced settings, click Show hidden files and folders, uncheck Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) and then click OK.
4. Remove all the malicious files manually.
%AppData%\Local\[random].exe
%AllUsersProfile%\{ Prize-Party.com\*.lnk
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\{random}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current\Winlogon\”Shell” = “{random}.exe”
Prize-Party.com can bring more threats to your computer which can use your internet connection to send your private information to remote servers, as well as receive ads and pop-ups from third party servers, causing much slower internet connection speed and overall connection instability. You should not trust Prize-Party Hijacker under any circumstances as it will only cause problems for your system. It is known to attack Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer, and can function in most versions of Windows, including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 and Windows 8. After infected, the homepage of your browser could have been changed without any permission. And the worse is you will not be able to reset it back too. Besides, it starts continuously rerouting Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines to its domain where undesirable ads are displayed. Therefore, you are highly recommended to remove Prize-Party.com hijacker from your system as soon as you detect it on your computer.
If you are not familiar with any manual removal process and are afraid of losing any personal data or files, please contact experts from YooCare Online Tech Support for further help.
Published by on March 26, 2013 1:18 am, last updated on March 26, 2013 1:19 am
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