There are many faces to browser hijacking. To combat the efforts of outside entities, education is your best defense. Browser hijacking isn’t necessarily a virus, or adware, so stopping it isn’t entirely best left to software monitoring programs. Some browser hijackers may also install themselves onto your computer system as legitimate programs, leaving an entry in the ‘add-remove programs’ list in the control panel. In this case it may be as simple as using your computer’s Add/Remove Software feature.
Pay Attention to what you do on the Internet and to the pop-up ads that are presented to you. Many times when you click the CLOSE button on malicious pop-up windows, you may actually be agreeing to terms and conditions and allowing software to be installed on your system.
The programs listed below have been created to assist you in removing Browser Hijacking software from your computer.
Hijackthis – A general homepage hijacker detection and removal software. It is continually updated to detect and remove new hijacks.
CWshredder – A small utility for removing CoolWebSearch, fixing redirections when mistyping URLs, enormous IE slowdowns when typing and IE start page/search page changing on reboot.
Bazooka Adware and Spyware Scanner – Detects a multitude of malicious code including: spyware, adware, trojan, keylogger, foistware and trackware components. These are sources of irritation that antivirus software does not remove from your computer.