ExpandedSkill

ExpandedSkill is a deceptive application that possesses traits of both adware and a browser hijacker. It targets Mac users predominantly and tries to sneak onto their computers through dubious marketing and distribution tricks. The most common one is known as bundling - it sees the installation of the application being hidden inside the installation process of another more popular program. This classifies applications such as ExpandedSkill as PUPs ( Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs)) thanks to the fact that users rarely install them knowingly.

Once inside the system, ExpandedSkill wastes no time. The application will begin to generate various intrusive ad materials, including pop-up windows, banners, surveys, and it could even start injecting hyperlinked advertisements into the text of visited sites. The overlays created by the application might cover some of the legitimate content viewed by the user. By itself, ExpandedSkill might be far more annoying than threatening but clicking on any of the advertisements it produces could take the user to third-party websites peddling additional PUPs or even compromised applications with malware threats lurking inside them.

The browser hijacker capabilities of ExpandedSkill manifest in its ability to take control over certain browser settings - mainly the homepage, the default search engine and new page tab. The objective is to set these settings to open a promoted address, thus generating artificial traffic towards it whenever the user opens the browser or conducts a search query. In almost all cases, the links promoted through browser hijacker applications are for fake search engines. On their own, these engines are incapable of generating a list of results due to simply lacking that kind of functionality. Instead, they redirect every search query conducted into the browser through a legitimate engine such as Yahoo, Google, etc. Users should keep in mind that numerous sponsored advertisements might be injected into the displayed results list.

It is recommended to remove ExpandedSkill or any similar PUP that is present on your Mac system as soon as you notice the first signs of their activity. Indeed, almost all applications of this type also can harvest user data such as browsing and search history, clicked URLs, IP address and geolocation.