Puredating Virus

Browser Hijacker
by Brandon Skies
December 2, 2022

Puredating

Puredating is a piece of software that operates as an integrated component in browsers like Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, and others, and its main goal is to promote different products, pages, apps, sites, and services directly from within the browser. Given the opportunity to get installed inside your browser, Puredating can, and will make changes in the homepage, replace the search engine, add new toolbar buttons and shortcuts, page-redirect your clicks and searches, and show ads on your screen.

Puredating

Here, we will be focusing on a specific browser hijacker responsible for the promotion of a page known as Puredating. If you have the corresponding hijacker in your system, you may see that Puredating has bee set as your homepage without your permission, or you may start to get redirected to it while browsing the Internet. As we already mentioned, other changes may be made in your browser, and the hijacker may disrupt your browsing experience in other ways.

On the surface, though rather irritating, such activity may not seem like a huge issue – after all, it’s just some unwanted changes in certain elements of the browser and occasional page-redirects and generation of ads. Indeed, many users do not really mind the presence of hijackers in their browsers. However, even those of you who may not have a big problem with the Puredating-related hijacker in your browser should know that such an app shouldn’t be kept in the browser for any extended period of time – read the next paragraph to learn why.

SUMMARY:

NamePuredating
TypeBrowser Hijacker
Detection Tool

Please follow all the steps below in order to remove Puredating!

How to remove Puredating

  1. First, click the Start Menu on your Windows PC.
  2. Type Programs and Settings in the Start Menu, click the first item, and find Puredating in the programs list that would show up.
  3. Select Puredating from the list and click on Uninstall.
  4. Follow the steps in the removal wizard.

What we suggest you do first is, check the list of programs that are presently installed on the infected device and uninstall any rogue software that you find there:

  • From the Start Menu, navigate to Control Panel ->>> Programs and Features ->>> Uninstall a Program.
  • Next, carefully search for unfamiliar programs or programs that have been installed recently and could be related to Puredating.
  • If you find any of the programs suspicious then uninstall them if they turn out to be linked to Puredating.
  • If a notification appears on your screen when you try to uninstall a specific questionable program prompting you to just alter it or repair it, make sure you choose NO and complete the steps from the removal wizard.

Remove Puredating from Chrome

  1. Click on the three dots in the right upper corner
  2. Go to more tools
  3. Now select extensions
  4. Remove the Puredating extension
  • Once you open Chrome, click on the three-dots icon to open the browser’s menu, go to More Tools/ More Options, and then to Extensions.
  • Again, find the items on that page that could be linked to Puredating and/or that might be causing problems in the browser and delete them.
  • Afterwards, go to this folder: Computer > C: > Users > *Your User Account* > App Data > Local > Google > Chrome > User Data. In there, you will find a folder named Default – you should change its name to Backup Default and restart the PC.
  • Note that the App Data folder is normally hidden so you’d have to first make the hidden files and folders on your PC visible before you can access it.

How to get rid of Puredating on FF/Edge/etc.

  1. Open the browser and select the menu icon.
  2. From the menu, click on the Add-ons button.
  3. Look for the Puredating extension
  4. Get rid of Puredating by removing it from extensions

If using Firefox:

  • Open Firefox
  • Select the three parallel lines menu and go to Add-ons.
  • Find the unwanted add-on and delete it from the browser – if there is more than one unwanted extension, remove all of them.
  • Go to the browser menu again, select Options, and then click on Home from the sidebar to the left.
  • Check the current addresses for the browser’s homepage and new-tab page and change them if they are currently set to address(es) you don’t know or trust.

If using MS Edge/IE:

  • Start Edge
  • Select the browser menu and go to Extensions.
  • Find and uninstall any Edge extensions that look undesirable and unwanted.
  • Select Settings from the browser menu and click on Appearance.
  • Check the new-tab page address of the browser and if it has been modified by “Puredating” or another unwanted app, change it to an address that you’d want to be the browser’s new-tab page.

How to Delete Puredating

  1. Open task manager
  2. Look for the Puredating process
  3. Select it and click on End task
  4. Open the file location to delete Puredating
  • Access the Task Manager by pressing together the Ctrl + Alt + Del keys and then selecting Task Manager.
  • Open Processes and there try to find a process with the name of the unwanted software. If you find it, select it with the right button of the mouse and click on the Open File Location option.
  • If you don’t see a “Puredating” process in the Task Manager, look for another suspicious process with an unusual name. It is likely that the unwanted process would be using lots of RAM and CPU so pay attention to the number of resources each process is using.
  • Tip: If you think you have singled out the unwanted process but are not sure, it’s always a good idea to search for information about it on the Internet – this should give you a general idea if the process is a legitimate one from a regular program or from your OS or if it is indeed likely linked to the adware.
  • If you find another suspicious process, open its File Location too.
  • Once in the File Location folder for the suspicious process, start testing all of the files that are stored there by dragging them to our free online scanner available below.
  • Each file will be scanned with up to 64 antivirus programs to ensure maximum accuracy
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    • If the scanner finds malware in any of the files, return to the Processes tab in the Task Manager, select the suspected process, and then select the End Process option to quit it.
    • Go back to the folder where the files of that process are located and delete all of the files that you are allowed to delete. If all files get deleted normally, exit the folder and delete that folder too. If one or more of the files showed an error message when you tried to delete them, leave them for now and return to try to delete them again once you’ve completed the rest of the guide.

    How to Uninstall Puredating

    1. Click on the home button
    2. Search for Startup Apps
    3. Look for Puredating in there
    4. Uninstall Puredating from Startup Apps by turning it off
    • Now you need to carefully search for and uninstall any Hostingcloud. racing-related entries from the Registry. The easiest way to do this is to open the Registry Editor app (type Regedit in the windows search field and press Enter) and then open a Find dialog (CTRL+F key combination) where you have to type the name of the threat. 
    • Perform a search by clicking on the Find Next button and delete any detected results. Do this as many times as needed until no more results are found. 
    • After that, to ensure that there are no remaining entries lined to Puredating in the Registry, go manually to the following directories and delete them:
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Random Directory. 
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/Random
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Internet Explorer/Main/Random
    Is Puredating virus dangerous?

    The change of your homepage to Puredating may not really do any direct harm to your system, and it may not be all that irritating to you. However, even though the hijacker behind this annoyance is different from viruses, Trojans, Ransomware, and other highly-dangerous malware threats, it still isn’t the safest piece of software you could have in your computer. The main safety issue related to most hijackers like Flowdeal, Captcha Fine, including the one related to Puredating, is the lack of control over what ads get displayed on your screen. In many cases, the adverts, the banners, and the page-redirects shown by hijackers may originate from unreliable and sketchy sites and pages. If you accidentally (or deliberately) click on such an advert, you may get linked to all kinds of obscure and questionable web addresses, many of which could even contain malware such as Trojan Horses, Worms, Ransomware cryptoviruses, and other similar dangers. Again, the hijacker itself isn’t an app that can directly harm your system or compromise your online security, but if you want to minimize the chances of landing some nasty piece of malware, it’s best to uninstall the hijacker. If you need any help doing that, we can offer it to you through our Puredating removal guide that you will find down below. Simply follow the instructions presented in it, and complete all of the steps exactly as they are shown and explained, or use the suggested professional removal tool, and you should have no difficulty removing the invasive piece of software from your computer.


    About the author

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    Brandon Skies

    Brandon is a researcher and content creator in the fields of cyber-security and virtual privacy. Years of experience enable him to provide readers with important information and adequate solutions for the latest software and malware problems.

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