Do you know what Screen Addict is?
Screen Addict is a new extension available for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers. It is promoted on screenaddict.thewhizproducts.com, which is considered to be its official website, and is particularly targeted at the group of people who are interested in movie reviews, interviews, and movie trailers. Hundreds of users download and install this extension also because it promises to help them access the most popular video streaming websites. Of course, it has been observed that this questionable extension might sneak onto the computer without permission as well. If you are one of those users who cannot explain how Screen Addict has appeared on the system, you should delete the extension without mercy. You will not miss this extension because it is not as useful as it claims to be. On top of that, our experts are sure that it should be put into the category of potentially unwanted programs. You will know why they think so if you read this article from beginning to end.
The first symptom that Screen Addict has been installed is the presence of the modified search engine search.mysearch.com. It has been observed that it will change your homepage and search engine. In addition, it will modify the New Tab page settings, which means that you will notice the presence of this search engine every time you open a new tab page. We cannot say that search.mysearch.com is a bad search engine. In fact, many users find it really decent because it provides links to Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia, Instagram, and other popular web pages. In addition, users find buttons leading to rottentomatoes.com, hollywoodreporter.com, and variety.com at the top of the search engine. Unfortunately, there is one main drawback associated with search.mysearch.com as well. Specialists have noticed that it might insert third-party ads and links among the search results from time to time. In other words, it shows the sponsored search results. It is quite dangerous to click on them because there is always a risk that they contain bad links and thus will redirect to corrupted pages. In order to find out what users are interested in, Screen Addict will gather information about them. We suspect that it is interested in search queries, links and ads users click on, and their location based on their IP addresses. Of course, other details might be of interest to Screen Addict as well.
Screen Addict screenshot
Scroll down for full removal instructions
Even though users only notice that search.mysearch.com has been set, we are 100% sure that this extension applies other changes as well. As our specialists have managed to find out, Screen Addict will create the folder impejcinnfjiglibifldfdcbinimlhko in %UserProfile% and %LOCALAPPDATA%. In addition, it will modify Preferences and Secure Preferences files by adding the string impejcinnfjiglibifldfdcbinimlhko. Finally, it is going to create two files (chrome-extension_impejcinnfjiglibifldfdcbinimlhko_0.localstorage and chrome-extension_impejcinnfjiglibifldfdcbinimlhko_0.localstorage-journal) in %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default. As you can see, even though this extension is quite simple, it applies quite many changes in order to work in a proper way. Of course, you will not see these changes anymore if you delete Screen Addict.
It is highly advisable to delete Screen Addict from your system if it has managed to slither onto your computer in software bundles or you have clicked on some kind of pop-up advertisement and then noticed its presence. Unfortunately, you might also need to take care of other untrustworthy applications that could slither together with Screen Addict. As malicious software tends to hide deep on the system, we suggest scanning PC with an antimalware scanner to detect all those threats. After doing that, you will be able to erase them in a manual way.
You can remove Screen Addict from your system completely by removing its extensions from browsers. Below you will find instructions that will help you to do that; however, if you still feel that it is a too difficult task for you, you should use an automatic malware remover, such as SpyHunter. All the infections will disappear after the single scan.
Delete Screen Addict
Mozilla Firefox
- Open your browser and tap Ctrl+Shift+A.
- Click Extensions.
- Select the extension and delete it.
Google Chrome
- Open your browser and tap Alt+F.
- Select More Tools.
- Click Extensions.
- Find and select the extension.
- Click the recycle bin button placed next to it.
In non-techie terms:
There are hundreds of different potentially unwanted programs on the web. In most cases, they look like completely reliable programs; however, they might still cause harm to systems. To prevent those programs from slithering onto your PC, you should install a security tool. It is also highly recommended to stay away from third-party web pages.