Browser Hijacking - A frustrating and Annoying trend that has plagued the computer user.
What is Browser Hijacking?
In simple terms the browser settings are hijacked by certain web sites with software that modifies and changes your default settings of start pages.
Browser Hijack or Homepage Hijack are a menacing and newer trend. They are just as annoying and intrusive as Adware, Spyware, and Trojans if not worse. The browser hijacker changes your browser's homepage and even your search functions to hijack you to "Their Site", which more often than not contains advertisements, pop ups and other unwanted promotions.
Hijackers are most offensive when they revert back to a web page that you did not intend to view and usually means that a program has been installed into your computer that makes the unwanted page come up. It continually changes your home page and often times prevents you from removing this hijacker from your system. Homepage Hijackers place a program that forces your computer to revert to a website that the program was intended to route the home page to on startup of your computer.
Homepage hijackers take advantage of and exploit IE (Internet Explorer) or Outlook Express which enables them to discreetly install into a computer system while you innocently are viewing a web site.
Some hijackers install an .EXE application into the system to enable the hijacking function and while these files have some difficulty intruding secure browsers, they are often downloaded by users when they download other needed files as they are disguised as browser updates, system enhancements or as an enticement of free useful utilities.
It is therefore important to carefully consider any downloads. One can never be too certain of the files that may contain the intrusive and annoying hijacking execution programs.
The reason for this hijacking is to compel you to visit "Their Site" so that you may either buy what they have to offer, or to boost their traffic rankings or to promote their advertisers. The most annoying part of all this is that it has happened without asking for your permission. They have literally infested and infiltrated your PC system.
Of course there is no good news about this entire hijacking process except that you can usually go into internet options and reset your browser settings. You may even at times have to edit the windows registry . This of course poses its own risk should you remove the wrong files. The worst type of infestations is when the registry setting and files placed on your hard drive can alter your settings each time you reboot your computer that will again cause your browser hijacking. What this means is that no matter how often you reset your settings it reverts to the settings that the infiltrating website wants the settings to be so that you are forced to view their sites whether you like it or not.
