Whenever I open Google Chrome, Shopsearchers.com appears itself automatically as my homepage. Sometimes it appears as a new tab. No matter how many times I’ve tried to set Google as my homepage, this annoying pop-up still comes up. I searched on internet, found lots and lots and lots of others with same problem, so many suggestions and antivirus suggestions, many very complicated and involved with many warnings about messing with registry files etc. I don’t know how to do now. Is there anyone that can help me get rid of this annoying redirect thing?
Shopsearchers.com is identified as a browser hijacker which is created to intentionally take control of your browser and change your default search pages. This web page has a deceitful interface. It provides a bogus search as similar as those real search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing and also displays many sponsored links on its page. The intent of this hijacker is to let PC users take it as default search engine as well as browser homepage, also it wants to fool them into clicking those advertisements shown on its web pages. In this way, whenever you open the browser, you will be forced to visit Shopsearchers.com again and again which helps the website designer make a profit from the artificial internet traffic. This hijacker is able to add its malicious contents to any browsers installed on your computer including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox as well as Google Chrome. Thus, you may see a search toolbar has suddenly appeared at the top of your browser and it won’t allow you to uninstall it. Simultaneously, it continually displays repeated and disgusting pop-up advertisements to you while you are using the affected browsers. Those unwelcome ads start popping up in the lower right hand corner of your browser. Sometimes it looks like a cell phone and sometimes it shows a video screen and says “you are missing a plugin to play videos” and wants you to click on an Update button. It can completely drive users insane due to those crazy ads.
When a browser hijacker is installed on your computer, it begins to unwittingly alter many default settings such as browser settings, DNS settings and others. Also it is good at redirecting you to websites you don’t actually want to visit; usually it will redirect you to adult, sales-focused or spyware/malware-infected websites that can compromise your internet security and privacy even more. Most of time you may get a redirect virus from unsafe freeware, shareware or advertising-supported programs such as various browser add-ons or toolbars. Therefore, you should be all eyes and ears when surfing the web. Always read the terms of use/service/agreement for any software you want to download and be cautious about freeware downloads and e-mails coming from unknown sources. Most importantly, you should get rid of Shopsearchers.com without any hesitation.
Note: This website may display various advertisements and sponsored links to lure users to click on it. PC users should never click on anything shown on this page, otherwise you will open a backdoor to let other viruses invade your computer to ruin your system.
Browser hijacker infection like Shopsearchers.com may enter your system as an add-on for your browser or bundled-up with some free software. Most of time, it can be downloaded from a website you visited, something you clicked on, or a pop-up that you did not request to view. You may not even know when and how you download this browser hijacker which compromises your internet security until you find your computer is fully messed up. A hijack virus is a type of computer virus known for its ability to disrupt your Internet browsing. It can redirect your Internet searches to random sites, disallow you from visiting certain Web sites, and change your Internet home page. In addition, it is able to slow your computer, decrease your available memory, and flood your computer with popup advertisements. When you detect the presence of such malicious hijacker, a complete removal is needed without any hesitation.
If you open your browser window (includes IE, Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome etc.) and notice immediately that your home page has been changed to a page you do not recognize, then your browser may have been hijacked by a virus. For this type of hijack virus, it can change your homepage to Shopsearchers.com without your permission. Other malicious activities can be shown on your computer after hijacked are listed below:
1. It can not only change your web pages, but also alter other settings to add toolbars, pop-up advertisements, and bookmarks that you did not create.
2. It can modify the homepage settings of your web browser, more commonly by reducing your internet security options. And the worse thing is it prevents you from changing them back.
3. New toolbars or Favorites are installed that give you icons and links to web pages that you don’t want.
4. It may block you from visiting certain website you’d like to visit and show an error page instead.
5. It will display constant pop-up ads, sometimes in such large amounts that you are not able to close neither the ads nor the browser.
Shopsearchers.com hijacks your browser to redirect your web search results and changes the homepage and browser settings. To completely uninstall it from an infected system, manual removal is the first choice because sometimes antivirus software cannot pick up the exact computer threat timely or remove it permanently. Now most browser hijackers are quite similar to spyware and adware threats and therefore cannot be removed with the help of popular antivirus products. Users can follow the manual guide here to get rid of this browser hijacker completely.
1. Clear all the cookies of your affected browsers.
Since this 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 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”
To remove all cookies click on the “Remove All Cookies” button
2. End the malicious process from Task Manager.
Once Shopsearchers.com redirect is installed, computer user may notice that CPU usage randomly jumps to 100 percent. At any time Windows always has many running processes. A process is an individual task that the computer runs. In general, the more processes, the more work the computer has to do and the slower it will run. If your system’s CPU spike is constant and remain at a constant 90-95%, users should check from Task Manager and see if there is a suspicious process occupying the system resources and then end it immediately.
(The name of the virus process can be random.)
Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to quickly bring up Task Manager Window：
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 related to Shopsearchers.com hijacker manually.
%AppData%Local[random].exe
C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\*.exe
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main StartPage
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Shopsearchers.com redirect can be regarded as an ads-supporting platform to display ads or promote site rankings. Usually it come as an add-on for your browser or bundled-up with some free software. Once you download that certain piece of freeware, you unknowingly download the browser hijack, compromising your internet security. When it is downloaded, it performs tons of malicious activities on your machine especially for interrupting your browsing sessions. It is not recommended users to use this corrupted page or even keep it long since this browser hijacker may track your web searches and even use java scripts to pilfer your identify information. Remove it as quickly as you can.
Note: If you are not a computer expert and have no idea how to perform the removal, please contact experts from YooCare Online Tech Support for further help.
Published by & last updated on January 6, 2014 8:58 am
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