LotusILoveYou “Virus” Removal

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Welcome to our LotusILoveYou “Virus” removal guide. The following instructions will aid you in removing the unwanted software from your PC.

A disturbance caused by LotusILoveYou “Virus” is the possible reason of you landing on this page. This program is a well-known browser hijacker, capable of imposing various changes to your browser’s homepage or search engine and redirecting your searches to certain promotional websites and aggressive ads. If your Chrome, Firefox, Explorer or some other browsing program, that you are using, has been invaded by LotusILoveYou “Virus”, then here we will help you remove it and bring your browser back to normal. In the next lines, you are going to find some basic information about the nature of this intrusive software, as well as a detailed removal guide, which can help you locate and uninstall all the browser hijacker components from your computer.

Is LotusILoveYou “Virus” dangerous software?

If you have just discovered this browser hijacker on your PC, you are most probably concerned about your system’s safety. This is a pretty common reaction, especially when you are not really sure where all these aggressive browser changes and popping advertisements come from and how did they got approved without your consent. Fortunately, there is no need to panic, because LotusILoveYou “Virus” is not created with the idea to do some major harm to your computer and all of its imposed changes can easily be removed from your system without any harmful consequences. This program is a browser hijacker – a type of software, which is not considered as a serious computer threat like a virus, a Trojan horse or a Ransomware, for example. However, this software has its own specifics, and many users, who face it, refer to it as potentially unwanted and often end up uninstalling it from their computer. The reason for that is the browser hijacker’s intrusiveness and the aggressive way it can mess with the users’ default browser settings, their searches, and the entire online experience.

How can LotusILoveYou “Virus” affect your PC?

To give you a better idea of what exactly a program like LotusILoveYou “Virus” is capable of, here we have listed the potentially unwanted activities and risks it could be related to:

• Modifying your browser settings. LotusILoveYou “Virus” may install some new toolbar in your Chrome or Firefox, replace your search engine, or change your homepage settings. This is not harmful activity, however, it could be related to some irritation and disturbance. For instance, as a result of the imposed changes, your online activity may frequently get interrupted by different promotions and ads, which can pop up any time, without asking your approval. In most of the cases, this is enough to irritate the affected users and give them a good reason to remove this software from their computer.
• Collecting “traffic data”. Online data tracking activity is a quite common method, employed by online vendors, marketers, and advertisers. They frequent use programs like LotusILoveYou “Virus” to track users’ browsing history and searches and the pages they frequently visit, to learn more about the users’ online habits and the products and services they are interested in. This is an online marketing practice, which is not illegal, and is done with one major purpose – the generation of customized promotional messages and profit from Pay-Per-Click advertisements. However, some users may feel uncomfortable with the idea of having their browsing tracked and used for marketing purposes. If you are one of them, removing LotusILoveYou “Virus” will save you from that.
• Redirecting you to unknown web locations. Browser hijackers like LotusILoveYou “Virus” are usually programmed to frequently redirect you to different tabs, promotional messages, ads and offers. You may frequently find yourself landing on web locations you had never intended to visit in the first place, and no one can guarantee how safe they are. We need to warn you that this is an practice, which may pose some indirect risks to your safety. Thanks to criminal methods like Malvertising, hackers may effectively spread threats like Trojans, Ransomware, and different computer viruses, and camouflage them as seemingly harmless ads, links, pop-ups, interesting offers or promotional websites, which can easily be generated and displayed by any browser hijacker. That’s why, it is not a good idea to have your screen flooded with such sketchy content, as you never know when you may unknowingly bump into a misleading link or well camouflaged malicious content. So, even though the browser hijacker itself does not pose a risk to your system, if you uninstall it, this will remove the flow of ads and page redirects and may save you from the chance of catching a real harmful infection.

Places where LotusILoveYou “Virus” could be found the most:

• Program bundles
• Free installation managers
• Different video player setups
• Games setups
• Different web advertisements
• Shareware and Torrent sites
• Freeware platforms
• Spam emails and attachments

LotusILoveYou “Virus” Removal

I – Safe mode and revealing hidden files

1. Boot your PC into Safe Mode /link/
2. Reveal hidden files and folders /link/

II – Uninstallation

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1. Use the Winkey+R keyboard combination, write Control Panel in the search field and hit enter.
   
2. Go to Uninstall a program under Programs.
   
3. Seek the unwanted software, select it and then click on Uninstall

If you are unable to spot LotusILoveYou “Virus”, search for any unrecognized programs that you do not remember installing on your PC – the unwanted software might disguise itself by going under a different name.

III – Cleaning all your browsers

1. Go to your browser’s icon, right-click on it and select Properties.
   
2. Go to the Shortcut tab and in the Target make sure to delete anything written after “.exe”.
   
3. Now, open your browser and follow the instructions below depending on whether you are using Chrome, Mozilla or IE.

• Chrome users:

1. Go to your browser’s main menu located in the top-right corner of the screen and select Settings.
   
2. Scroll down, click on Show Advanced Settings and then select Clear browsing data. Just to be sure, tick everything and clear the data.
   
3. Now, in the left pane, go to Extensions and look through all extensions that are integrated within your browser. If you notice any suspicious add-on, disable it and then remove it.
   

• Firefox users:

1. Similarly to Chrome, go to the main menu and select Add-ons and then Extensions.
2. Remove any suspicious browser extensions that you may have even if they do not have the name LotusILoveYou “Virus” on them.

• IE users:

1. Go to Tools and select Manage add-ons.
   
2. Click on all add-on types from the left pane and check if there is anything suspicious in the right panel. In case you find anything shade, make sure to remove it.

IV – Removing Shady processes

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1. Go to your start menu, type Task Manager in the search field and from the results open View running processes with Task Manager.
   
2. Thoroughly look through all processes. The name LotusILoveYou “Virus” might not be there, but if you notice any shady looking process that consumes high amounts of memory it might be ran by the unwanted program.
3. If you spot the process ran by LotusILoveYou “Virus”, right-click on it, open its file location and delete everything in there. Then go back to the Task Manager and end the process.
   

V – DNS check

1. In the start menu search box write View Network Connections and open the first result.
   
2. Right-click on the network connection you are using and go to Properties.
   
3. Select Internet Protocol Version (TCP/IPv4) and click on Properties.
   
4. If Obtain DNS server addresses automatically is not checked, check it.
   
5. Go to Advanced and select the DNS If there is anything in the DNS server addresses field, remove it and click OK.
   
6. Click OK on the rest of the opened windows.