Remove Home.searchfreehoroscope.com Redirect

Can’t Remove Home.searchfreehoroscope.com hijacker virus? This page includes detailed Home.searchfreehoroscope.com Removal instructions!

Are you stuck with the Home.searchfreehoroscope.com search engine? This pest is anything but reliable. In fact, Home.searchfreehoroscope.com has been classified as a browser hijacker. In case you’ve had previous bad experience with hijackers, you already know you’re in trouble. Hijackers only become more and more dangerous as time passes. So does the Home.searchfreehoroscope.com virus. Note this is a creation of greedy cyber criminals. Hackers constantly keep on working on hijackers because these programs allow them to gain profit. How does the parasite help crooks make money? It injects your browsers with some specific, sponsored web links. By doing so, Home.searchfreehoroscope.com boosts web traffic. That is how hackers effectively gain profit through the pay-per-click mechanism. All they need is to modify your default browser settings. Home.searchfreehoroscope.com is extremely effective in that department. As soon as the hijacker gets downloaded, it alters your search engine and homepage. Needless to say, your permission has nothing to do with these changes. Now that your machine is infected, your entire online experience is hijacked. You’re no longer in charge of your very own browsers. The virus also installs a malicious browser extension behind your back. Once its shenanigans are complete, you’ll notice a pile of sponsored search results. Home.searchfreehoroscope.com originally promises to provide accurate, safe web links. If you check out its official website, you’ll read that Home.searchfreehoroscope.com enhances your browsing experience. The hijacker is also supposed to provide your daily horoscopes. This isn’t the first infection that is presented as a perfectly safe PC program, though. You should know better than to keep the parasite on your board thinking it’s safe. Such parasites also serve as back doors to malware. They might bring along sponsored pop-up ads as well. In this scenario, you will be bombarded with irritating, useless pop-up ads. Yes, you may get stuck with an endless pile of commercials in all shapes imaginable. Unless you stay away from them, you could easily compromise your safety further. Remember that a sponsored advertisement is immensely unreliable. Even if some of the ads seem attractive, they all get generated by a virus. Thus, trusting them would be a terribly bad idea. Home.searchfreehoroscope.com redirects you every time you browse the Web. It even spies on your browsing history and other sensitive details. As you could imagine, that gives hackers more chances to make money at your expense. Long story short, the troublesome parasite must go. The sooner you remove it, the better.

Remove Home.searchfreehoroscope.com

How did I get infected with?

There are a couple of particularly popular techniques. It goes without saying all of them are deceptive and stealthy. Hackers are trying to both compromise your safety and leave you oblivious to the installation. They have various tricks up their sleeve and the Internet is full of malware. Is that not enough of a reason for you to be cautious online? You might accidentally download a whole bunch of infections with a single careless move. To protect your machine, stay away from unverified or illegitimate websites. When installing bundled software, take your time. Many PC users prefer to skip important steps and end up installing viruses. Note that there are much more stubborn and aggressive types of parasites out there. It is up to you whether some of them will eventually get installed or not. Removing malware would be your responsibility so do yourself a favor. Opt for the custom or advanced option in the Setup Wizard instead of the Basic one. Watch out for “bonus” programs you might spot hiding in the bundles. Deselect any potential intruder and be careful.

Why is this dangerous?

The Home.searchfreehoroscope.com virus is compatible with all your browsers. It messes with Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. By modifying their settings, this parasite takes control over your online experience. Not only are your browser settings changed but you also get redirected to unknown websites. As mentioned, the search results generated by the virus are highly questionable. Same thing goes for the pop-up ads and other commercials you may come across. In addition, your PC speed is effectively slowed down and your browsers begin to frequently crash. To delete the hijacker, please follow our detailed manual removal guide down below.

How to Remove Home.searchfreehoroscope.com virus

The Home.searchfreehoroscope.com infection is specifically designed to make money to its creators one way or another. The specialists from various antivirus companies like Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Norton, Avast, ESET, etc. advise that there is no harmless virus.

If you perform exactly the steps below you should be able to remove the Home.searchfreehoroscope.com infection. Please, follow the procedures in the exact order. Please, consider to print this guide or have another computer at your disposal. You will NOT need any USB sticks or CDs.

STEP 1: Track down Home.searchfreehoroscope.com related processes in the computer memory

STEP 2: Locate Home.searchfreehoroscope.com startup location

STEP 3: Delete Home.searchfreehoroscope.com traces from Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer

STEP 4: Undo the damage done by the virus

STEP 1: Track down Home.searchfreehoroscope.com related processes in the computer memory

  • Open your Task Manager by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ESC keys simultaneously
  • Carefully review all processes and stop the suspicious ones.

end-malicious-process

  • Write down the file location for later reference.

Step 2: Locate Home.searchfreehoroscope.com startup location

Reveal Hidden Files

  • Open any folder
  • Click on “Organize” button
  • Choose “Folder and Search Options”
  • Select the “View” tab
  • Select “Show hidden files and folders” option
  • Uncheck “Hide protected operating system files”
  • Click “Apply” and “OK” button

Clean Home.searchfreehoroscope.com virus from the windows registry

  • Once the operating system loads press simultaneously the Windows Logo Button and the R key.

win-plus-r

  • A dialog box should open. Type “Regedit”

regedit

Depending on your OS (x86 or x64) navigate to:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] or
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] or
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]

  • and delete the display Name: [RANDOM]

delete backgroundcontainer

  • Then open your explorer and navigate to: %appdata% folder and delete the malicious executable.

Clean your HOSTS file to avoid unwanted browser redirection

Navigate to %windir%/system32/Drivers/etc/host

If you are hacked, there will be foreign IPs addresses connected to you at the bottom. Take a look below:

hosts-redirect-virus

STEP 3 : Clean Home.searchfreehoroscope.com traces from Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer

  • Open Google Chrome

  • In the Main Menu, select Tools then Extensions
  • Remove the Home.searchfreehoroscope.com by clicking on the little recycle bin
  • Reset Google Chrome by Deleting the current user to make sure nothing is left behind

disable Home.searchfreehoroscope.com from chrome

  • Open Mozilla Firefox

  • Press simultaneously Ctrl+Shift+A
  • Disable the unwanted Extension
  • Go to Help
  • Then Troubleshoot information
  • Click on Reset Firefox

remove Home.searchfreehoroscope.com from firefox

  • Open Internet Explorer

  • On the Upper Right Corner Click on the Gear Icon
  • Click on Internet options
  • go to Toolbars and Extensions and disable the unknown extensions
  • Select the Advanced tab and click on Reset

remove Home.searchfreehoroscope.com from ie

  • Restart Internet Explorer

Step 4: Undo the damage done by Home.searchfreehoroscope.com

This particular Virus may alter your DNS settings.

Attention! this can break your internet connection. Before you change your DNS settings to use Google Public DNS for Home.searchfreehoroscope.com, be sure to write down the current server addresses on a piece of paper.

To fix the damage done by the virus you need to do the following.

  • Click the Windows Start button to open the Start Menu, type control panel in the search box and select Control Panel in the results displayed above.
  • go to Network and Internet
  • then Network and Sharing Center
  • then Change Adapter Settings
  • Right-click on your active internet connection and click properties. Under the Networking tab, find Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4). Left click on it and then click on properties. Both options should be automatic! By default it should be set to “Obtain an IP address automatically” and the second one to “Obtain DNS server address automatically!” If they are not just change them, however if you are part of a domain network you should contact your Domain Administrator to set these settings, otherwise the internet connection will break!!!

You must clean all your browser shortcuts as well. To do that you need to

  • Right click on the shortcut of your favorite browser and then select properties.

safebrowsing-biz-shortcut-removal

  • in the target field remove Home.searchfreehoroscope.com argument and then apply the changes.
  • Repeat that with the shortcuts of your other browsers.
  • Check your scheduled tasks to make sure the virus will not download itself again.

How to Permanently Remove Home.searchfreehoroscope.com Virus (automatic) Removal Guide

Please, have in mind that once you are infected with a single virus, it compromises your whole system or network and let all doors wide open for many other infections. To make sure manual removal is successful, we recommend to use a free scanner of any professional antimalware program to identify possible registry leftovers or temporary files.

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