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How To Remove Trusted Surf (Virus)

Edmend Stewart

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How to Remove Trusted Surf “Virus”

Do you regularly search through sites on the web? If so, then you should pay attention not to let browser hijackers such as TrustedSurf.com “Virus” invade your PC. A browser hijacker is a piece of software that gets installed on your computer, often without your consent. When you browse through different web pages, you may come across lots of pop-ups, banners or links, showing ads of different products. These pop-ups often may have hidden scripts or codes running in the background. These scripts are not visible, nor you can guess about their existence by looking at the pop-up windows. However, when you click closer, they may run and install an embedded browser hijacker on your PC, ironically, with your consent. Another way to get a browser hijacker is by installing a free software because they usually are bundled inside the installation package.

So, how dangerous is TrustedSurf.com?

Technically speaking, Trusted Surf is more or less wrongly being accused of being a virus. The truth is this is not a virus. Trusted Surf is a legal program, developed to serve the online advertising purposes and is legitimately installed on your PC via your OK click install permission. Viruses, on the contrary, are malicious pieces of software that sneak through your system unnoticed. They aim to steal information, break your normal system performance, lock or destroy files and data and definitely do no good to you and your PC. This browser hijacker has nothing to do with the actions above, and may simply be called annoying application that may interrupt users browsing activity. You have probably found its constant advertising messages irritating and may be looking for an option to uninstall it in the sake of the clean PC screen.

What exactly is TrustedSurf.com doing?

It may collect information about your internet browsing habits through Google Chrome, Mozilla, Internet Explorer or other browsers you may use. This information may be automatically sent to the source of the browser hijacker. The company that owns the browser hijacker may then analyze this data and know more about you and your web searches. They may use this information to show you different types of advertisements in the form of pop-up windows, in-text messages, banners, call to action, links, etc. For instance, if you search about a new cell phone on Google, then the next day you may get a pop-up message showing an advertisement on new cell phones, or your web page may be redirected to a link with hot cell phone offers, or cell phone accessories.

Actually, this may not be so bad. But think about dealing with several ads of these every few minutes, or whenever you open a new window on your browser. It may be quite irritating and may disturb your actual browsing activity. In some cases, the browser hijacker activity may become so much disturbing, that you may get up to 25-30 ads messages per day. That’s a lot of advertising even for someone who really loves to see adverts.

And this is not everything, this nasty application may run as a background process whenever you turn on your PC. This way it may continuously use some amount of your valuable CPU resources. As a result, your PC may run in a sluggish manner. Not just that, but it may eat up a good amount of your internet bandwidth as well. This may happen, because the program keeps constantly scanning your web searches and sending this data to the source. Removing it may save you from these undesired actions.

A simple step to keep browser hijacker away:

There is no need to say that you should always pay attention when you surf the web and interact with unknown ads and applications. As we already mentioned above, you are more likely to get an browser hijacker when you download free applications. They are bundled inside the installation and when you normally click on the custom option to install, you may overlook the other options, which will get the browser hijacker installed as well. There is a simple step that will prevent this to happen and it is good to know it. When you open the installation wizard, you are more likely to see “Custom” and “Advanced” option. Do not be afraid to press the “Advanced” one, as there you will find the browser hijacker. Simply uncheck the checkbox and you will not have to deal with it after the installation of the software you wanted.

Removing TrustedSurf.com.

Thankfully, browser hijackers are usually not so hard to remove. Any good pop up blocker will deal with it easily. Apart from that, you may decide to install a good anti-spyware tool in your PC and have it scanned frequently. In case you decide to remove this annoyance completely from your PC, below is a guide that may help you clean up this browser hijacker and save you from the invasion that your PC may be suffering from.

TrustedSurf.com Removal Instructions

Many types of malware will restrict your access to their core files. It is highly recommended that you reboot your PC in safe mode before attempting to use this guide.

WARNING! If you are using Windows 8,0 or later and/or your operating system is installed on a fast SSD drive this may fail to work. In this case click here to see how to start your PC in Safe Mode.

#1: Uninstall the malicious program from your control panel

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Enter control panel to look for any suspicious programs, which may have installed on your PC. To do that:

  1. Navigate to your Desktop
  2. Press simultaneously the Win button together with the R button (Win+R)
  3. In the Run window that just opened type appwiz.cpl

  1. Go through the list of programs and find Trusted Surf or anything else that may seem suspicious. Right-click on it and choose the uninstallation option

WARNING! Carefully read any confirmation messages that may be created in the process. Sometimes you may get offers to download more Adware applications and this can be linked to either the Yes or the No answer depending on the wording!

Go through the list of programs again and check online for any potentially unwanted programs. We have an article that covers this awesome free software that makes sure that your computer is free from bloatware and programs that you don’t need.

#2: Remove Trusted Surf From Chrome

Now we’ll remove the extensions that the malware has attached to your browser.

  1. Open your Google Chrome browser.
  2. Type chrome://extensions/  in the URL address bar and press Enter.
  3. Click on “Developer Mode” on the top right and look for the extension installed by Trusted Surf and anything that might be related to it. Copy their IDs (the string of letters), then remove them by clicking on the trash bin icon.

  1. Type Regedit in the Windows Start Menu and press Enter. Go in : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Google\Chrome\Extensions and delete the entries corresponding to the suspicious IDs you recorded.

#3: Remove Trusted Surf From Firefox

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox browser.
  2. Type “about:support” in the URL address bar and press Enter.
  3. Click on the “Refresh Firefox” button on the right and confirm.

#4 Remove Trusted Surf From Internet Explorer

  1. Open your Internet Explorer internet browser.
  2. Click on the Gear icon on the up right, then on manage add-ons.
  3. Go through the list disable any suspicious extensions.

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#4 Remove any leftover parasitic processes

From the task manager:

  1. Use Ctrl + Shift + Esc and open the Task manager, then click on the Processes
  2. Go through the list of processes and look for unknown or otherwise suspicious entries.
  3. If you see anything suspicious right click on the process and shoes Open File Location, then terminate the process and delete any files you find in the directory.

WARNING! If the directory you open from this menu has no files inside of it it’s probably because the malware has hidden them. You need to reveal hidden files and folders in order to be able to see them. Click here if you don’t know how to do that.


From the start menu:

  1. Press simultaneously the Win button together with the R button (Win+R)
  2. In the Run window that just opened type msconfig
  3. Click on the Startup tab.

This menu controls which programs are loaded when windows starts after a reboot. Disable anything that seems suspicious. Optionally you can also disable any program that you don’t need and also has a high impact on your startup time.

Feel free to write to us in the comment section with any questions that you may have. Also if we have been helpful to you please share this article to help us reach more people like you.  

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