BrowserActivity

BrowserActivity has been observed to spread itself among Mac users by pretending to be an Adobe Flash Player installer. This is a common tactic associated with PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs). After all, users are extremely unlikely to willingly download and install an application that would only serve to severely diminish the user experience on the device. BrowserActivity is not an exception, as it is designed to act as adware, a browser hijacker and a data collector.

The adware functionality is responsible for running an intrusive advertising campaign. The advertisements could be delivered as pop-ups, banners, surveys, in-text links, etc. They could even start to overlay any legitimate content that the users are trying to view. Although these advertisements are designed to attract the attention of the user with clickbait messages and promises, it is recommended not to click on any of them. Doing so could take the user to untrustworthy third-party websites.

At the same time, the browser hijacker part of BrowserActivity will establish control over the Web browsers present on the system. The goal is to generate artificial traffic and promote a sponsored address, usually that of a fake search engine. While most hoax engines redirect to a legitimate search engine such as Yahoo, Bing, or Google ultimately, they could inject advertisements or other materials into the presented list of results.

Users also should keep in mind that while there are PUPs present on their Macs, their browsing activity might be tracked and uploaded to a remote server. The creators of the PUP could then attempt to sell the gathered data to third parties.