Home Search Design

The Home Search Design could initially appear as a convenient and even useful application. However, once installed on the user's computer, the application will establish control over the installed browsers. It can affect Chrome, Firefox, and other popular browsers, and change several, essential settings.

Indeed, users will start noticing redirects to unfamiliar addresses. This behavior is most likely caused as a result of having the browser's homepage, new tab page, and default search engine modified to now open a promoted page. In the vast majority of cases when such PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs) are involved, the sponsored address belongs to a fake search engine. Fake engines lack the ability to produce any results on their own and instead cause further redirects to other sources. Users could be shown search results taken from legitimate engines, such as Yahoo, Bing and Google, or, alternatively, they may be presented with low-quality results filled with third-party ads taken from dubious engines.

Another consequence of keeping a PUP on your device could be a drastic increase in the encountered advertisements. Users could begin seeing numerous untrustworthy advertisements promoting unsafe destinations, fake giveaways, phishing portals and more. Interacting with the advertisements generated by such unproven sources could trigger forced redirects leading to additional questionable pages. In addition, PUPs are notorious for spying on users' browsing activities. However, the collected information also may include numerous device details and, in more risky cases, even sensitive details, such as account and banking credentials extracted from the browser's autofill data.