Photorito.me

The Photorito.me address belongs to a fake search engine. Furthermore, it is being promoted through questionable means involving a browser hijacker application named Photorito. These dubious applications are rarely downloaded and installed by users willingly. Instead, they sneak themselves onto the users' computers or devices through shady tactics, such as bundling or fake software installers. That is why the Photorito application also is classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program).

Overview

The Photorito application is capable of affecting all major browsers by taking control over their settings. To be more specific, the application modifies the homepage, new tab page, and the default search engine by changing all three to now open its own address. Fake engines do not have the functionality to generate results on their own. Instead, they operate in one of two ways. First, they might redirect the initiated search query through a legitimate engine, such as Yahoo, Google or Bing. The second method involves starting a redirect chain that could go through several fake or dubious engines. Photorito.me follows the second path as it causes redirects to alphashoppers.co and searchroute-1560352588.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com. These two dubious addresses also are part of the activities of other browser hijackers such as MacOSDefender. 

Risks

Keeping PUPs present on your devices is risky. While these applications are not classified as malware and, as such, do not pose a direct threat, they can still perform numerous invasive actions. One common trait found in PUPs is their ability to spy on the user's browsing activities. The intruder application could be continuously tracking all clicked links, conducted searches, opened sites, as well as certain device details, such as the IP address, geolocation and more.