Does your browser keep redirecting you to www-search.net? Why your homepage has been changed to this page without your permission? Is it a virus that attacks web browser? The following page contains step by step instructions on how to remove www-search.net from Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome.
www-search.net is a web site that provides online searches. This engine claims to display reliable search results. However, if you have a closer look, you will notice that on top of its results it shows a list with sponsored links. This is not a reliable web pages because it is closely linked to browser hijacker or adware that usually infects a computer by exploiting security vulnerabilities or comes bundled with various music players, video recorders and download managers. As soon as it is installed, it modifies the settings of your browser and will corrupt the local DNS (or Domain Name System) entries to accomplish their hijackers. As a consequence, whenever you use Internet explorer, Mozilla Firefox, even Google Chrome to browse online, you will see the homepage has been set up as www-search.net already and no matter what you do, it will not allow you to change it to Google, Yahoo or any others as you wish. In addition, your default search provider is changed to Tuvaro search without your permission. Additionally, you may get many unwanted tool bars attached on your browser. Although this website owns a deceitful interface, you shouldn’t use it as your default homepage or default search engine because this is just another fake search engine site with a limited reputation on the web, similarly to Airzip.inspsearch.com hijacker. It can not only interrupt browsing activities, but also can install unwanted applications, browser helper objects (add-ons, extensions, toolbars), and third party programs to the computer and browser without consent. This tactic often entraps victims and causes browsers redirection to www-search.net so that criminals can use the artificial traffic to boost affiliate payments. Apart from the above damages, www-search.net hijacker may constantly use your internet connection to send your private information to remote servers, as well as receive ads and pop-ups from third party servers. It poses a huge risk for your privacy and computer security. Since a redirect virus can make your browsing rather hard and prevent your online usage, please remove it as soon as possible.
1. Your homepage is changed to www-search.net without your permission. No matter how hard you have tried, you are not allowed to change it back to the web page you prefer; 2. It blocks your antivirus program from running properly and keeps leading you to phishing websites and other sites with questionable content; 3. It can redirect you to malicious websites with numerous pop up ads to interrupt and stop you from doing anything on your computer; 4. It can turn your computer to run slowly and pose sudden death; 5. It can introduce more unwanted viruses and ransomware to do further harms;
www-search.net 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 www-search.net 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 www-search.net 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
If your search engine is keeping redirecting to www-search.net while using the victim browser, and the new tab is always begins with www-search.net, then you have to be careful while using the infected browser no matter the browser you are using is Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Firefox because your computer is infected www-search.net redirect. In fact, the redirect virus we are talking about is different from computer virus, so many antivirus may not be able to catch it in instant. It is a division of computer hacking item because of its differential characteristics from common PC viruses. It would offers you a collection of search results about the item you are searching currently, and the words of search query will be collected for its creator and all the partners of this redirect will have right to view it. In fact, this redirect is able to invade to almost all the browsers we can use today. That is why you are redirected to its domain so changing another browser cannot reduce the risk of this infection. In this case, if you want to protect your privacy, you need to remove www-search.net redirect quickly.
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 9, 2014 11:58 pm
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