What is WinSnare “Virus”? (Removal Steps)

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Welcome to our WinSnare removal guide. The following instructions will aid you in removing the unwanted software from your Windows PC as well as help you with the question  “What is WinSnare?”.

Here, in the following paragraphs, we are going to discuss an Adware-based product – WinSnare “Virus”. This program is the reason why your browser’s behavior has changed and it has started broadcasting a disturbingly big number of online ads: pop-ups, banners, boxes. What’s even more annoying is the fact that once your system has caught this Adware, all of your browsers can become affected: Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Explorer. Below you will find some essential additional information about this program.

What is WinSnare “Virus” ?

Adware-type software has emerged as a marketing tool. All such programs are able to display a great number of online advertisements in their aim to promote products and services in the most efficient way. These activities could really annoy the affected users and make them believe they have to deal with a malicious program. However, no Adware version has ever been classified as malware or shown any malicious features. The malware versions that exist typically do something really wrong to your PC or to you as an individual. For instance, any Ransomware-based virus is perfectly capable of encrypting your most important files. Then this program normally asks you to pay to its creators, some dishonest hackers, an amount of money to get your data back. Another example is any Trojan horse virus. All of these malicious products could infiltrate your machine by using a vulnerability in its system. After that their potential actions include destruction of important data, corruption of files, spying on you through key strokes, webcam and microphone, stealing your account credentials and keeping track of your everyday life.

No Adware, including WinSnare, may ever be able to do something as evil and intrusive as the typical malicious activities stated above. However, most Adware versions are pretty irritating and have therefore earned themselves a bit of a shady image of potentially unwanted programs. What they could indeed follow about you is your daily surfing history based on the data recorded by your browsers. This kind of research gives them the opportunity to show you only the ads of products you might be searching the web for. Another rather annoying feature is the slowdown Adware might sometimes cause, especially to machines with scarce resources as the process of generating advertisements might use most of them.

Why does WinSnare produce so many pop-up and other types of ads?

As we have mentioned before, all Adware has been developed to promote various products. That’s why WinSnare and its sibling programs may really produce too many banners and pop-ups that may stop you from exploring the Internet fully. The producers of goods believe that the more you are exposed to the sight of what they offer you, the more willing you will be to buy something from the promoted things. That’s why they pay web developers to program Adware to generate as many ads as possible. Another payment requirement could be based on the number of the opened/followed/clicked on advertisements. To sum it up: both programmers and manufacturers profit from delivering such a great number of these annoying ads. However, making money in this way is not illegal at all – it is a common and accepted business strategy.

What could you do to avoid WinSnare and to finally get rid of it?

To be fully prepared to fight or stay away from such ad-displaying pieces of software, you have to be aware of the way they get spread on the web and the way they get to your computer. When we talk about any version of ad-producing programs, both Adware and hijackers reach your device mostly via software bundles. The bundles are what developers create to spread WinSnare around – they are normally completely harmless sets of games and diverse programs. When you download such a bundle, to avoid the ad-generating program inside it, you just have to follow a simple installation tip:

• When the installation wizard opens, you will see different installation options. Of the ones there, make sure that you always select the advanced method. In some installers it could be called the customized installation feature. The essence of this option is the same, no matter what its name is – it will give you the chance to install any program manually and choose which of its features to incorporate into your machine. In this way you can always opt out of the ad-broadcasting piece of software inside a given bundle.

Another very important piece of advice is to be careful with the online locations that you visit – they could be contaminated. Only visit reputable and trustworthy sites. To remove WinSnare, please continue and implement the instructions in the Removal Guide below. We hope everything goes smoothly and you solve your problems.

WinSnare “Virus” Removal

I – 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
   1. If you are unable to spot WinSnare, 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.

II – Safe mode and revealing hidden files

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

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 WinSnare 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 WinSnare 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 WinSnare, 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.