Me.fo Hijacker

Me.fo appears to be a legitimate news and search portal catered towards Russian-speaking users. However, if this is the case, you might be wondering why is your browse opening this page frequently, without asking for your consent. Furthermore, the same address may suddenly appear as the browser's homepage, new tab page, default search engine, a combination of the three settings or all of them. The reason for this is quite simple - an intrusive browser hijacker application has managed to install itself on your computer or device.

These intrusive applications and browser extensions rely on dubious distribution tactics and methods extensively, to spread themselves. The goal is to avoid attracting the attention of the users towards the fact that a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) is going to be installed on their devices.

Browser hijackers are designed to generate artificial traffic and promote specific Web pages specifically. As we mentioned earlier, they do so by taking control over the user's Web browsers and modifying several important settings forcibly. Usually, the promoted page belongs to an outright fake search engine that instead of generating results on its own, redirects the user's search queries to other engines. This means that the displayed results may not always be trustworthy, as they could have various shady links and sponsored advertisements interspersed among them.

PUPs also are equipped with data-collection capabilities frequently. The operators of the intrusive application may be interested in obtaining data about the user's browsing activities, conducted searches and opened links. In addition, device informati, such as IP address, browser type, OS type, geolocation, and more, also could be harvested and transmitted to a remote server.