VantageAdvisor

Unscrupulous application creators are still releasing new intrusive adware applications belonging to the rather prolific AdLoad adware family. One example is the VantageAdvisor application. It is equipped with adware capabilities and, like a typical AdLoad application, it targets Mac users predominantly. Once activated on the user's device, VantageAdvisor will start generating unwanted advertisements as a way to generate monetary gains for its operators.

Advertisements delivered by adware can have a detrimental impact on the user experience on the affected device. More importantly, the advertisements are commonly used as promotional channels for dubious destinations, such as hoax websites, fake giveaways, phishing portals, suspicious online betting/gaming sites and more. When users interact with the displayed advertisements, they also may trigger forced redirects, taking them to additional untrustworthy places.

Adware, browser hijackers, and other PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs also could carry data-monitoring capabilities. While present on the device, these applications may be silently monitoring the users' browsing activities. Some PUPs can even harvest device details or extract confidential information, such as banking and payment details from browsers' autofill data.