Your Captcha Now Virus

Your Captcha Now

Your Captcha Now is an extension for Chrome and Firefox that installs itself in the browser and replaces the search engine and the homepage. The changes Your Captcha Now makes are supposed to help turn your browser into a platform for generation of online adverts.

Apps such as Your Captcha Now are typically referred to as browser hijackers because they take over the main browser on the computer where they are installed and force it to promote various kinds of products, services, and sites on the user’s screen. If Your Captcha Now installs in your computer, it will generate obstructive advertisements, pop-ups, and banners in the browser and it will automatically open new tabs or page-redirect the current tab you are on to the sites it is programmed to popularize. In order to facilitate its agenda, this undesirable app will also change the starting page address of your browser in order to ensure that you’d be generating visits to a given site each time you start your main browser. The new search engine installed by this app will also serve the purpose of getting you more exposed to different advertisements. Instead of getting the most relevant results when you look something up, if Your Captcha Now is in your browser, the browser’s search engine would be giving you modified search results that favor different advertised sites.

All in all, if you have noticed any of these symptoms, then it is almost certain that you have this browser hijacker in your computer, in which case, the best thing you can do is uninstall it. Removing Your Captcha Now and Captcha Today is the only way to end its ad-generation and to bring back your normal browser settings.

The YourCaptchaNow Virus

Normally, the YourCaptchaNow Virus will not harm the computer it is installed on. It might cause the browser to become sluggish and to take more time when loading new pages, but this doesn’t mean any damage is being done to your computer. However, in spite of this, the presence of the YourCaptchaNow Virus in your computer could still lead to potential security issues, albeit indirectly.

The main thing you need to be on the lookout for is the misleading ads you may get exposed to while the hijacker is active on the computer. Many ads on the Internet are not what they seem to be and some could redirect you to unsafe addresses if you interact with them. Some may even get your computer attacked by different kinds of viruses and malware, including advanced threats like Ransomware, Trojans, and Spyware. Most browser hijackers are created to display as many ads as possible irrespective of their reliability. This means that even if the hijacker itself won’t try to harm your computer, the ads shown by it on your screen might redirect you to sites and pages that contain pirated software, phishing forms, and even disguised Trojans and Ransomware infections. Therefore, even if you aren’t too bothered by the ads, you should still get this app uninstalled in order to ensure that your computer stays safe.

SUMMARY:

Remove Your Captcha Now Virus

Dealing with a browser hijacker such as Your Captcha Now may be a draining process but the quick instructions below may save you some time and efforts if you give them a try:

1. Click on the main menu option of the hijacked browser (typically it is situated top right) and select More Tools (or Add-ons), depending on the browser you are using.
2. After that find the Extensions tab and open it.
3. Then, carefully search for Your Captcha Now -related extensions (or other unfamiliar ones) and remove them by clicking on their respective remove/trash bin button.
4. Restart the browser after you are done and use it for some time to see if any symptoms of Your Captcha Now show up.

In case the browser operates normally after you remove the hijacker-related extensions, you can easily skip the detailed instructions in the guide below. If, however, Your Captcha Now is not gone, then make sure that you carefully apply the steps in the removal guide just as they are shown.

First, we recommend that you Bookmark this page by clicking on the bookmark icon (top right) in the address bar. In this way, you can easily get back to the Your Captcha Now removal guide and complete all of its steps after a system or browser restart.

Next, we recommend that you use the instructions from this link to reboot the computer in Safe Mode.

Safe Mode is a very basic mode of operation of the system that allows for easy detection of potentially unwanted components and processes, which eventually could ease up the removal of Your Captcha Now from your computer.

WARNING! READ CAREFULLY BEFORE PROCEEDING!

Start with the CTRL + SHIFT + ESC key combinaiton to call up the Windows Task Manager on your screen.

Next, go straight to the Processes Tab (the “Details” Tab on Win 8 and 10) and search for processes that you belive are related to Your Captcha Now or could be dangerous. 

Right-click on every process that grabs your attention as suspicious and select Open File Location. Drop the files stored in that location in our free online virus scanner to check them for danger:

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If the scanned files turn out to be dangerous, end the process they come from (select it >>>right-click>>>End Process) and delete their folders. 

Note: If you find more than one process that looks dangerous, repeat the file-scanning procedure to determine if it needs to be ended or not. Please, do not end processes that are legitimate as this may destabilize your OS.

Simultaneously press the Windows and R keys from the keyboard and type appwiz.cpl in the Run box that appears.

Click OK and you will find yourself in the Control Panel where you can review all apps that are presently installed on your system. Take your time and carefully review all apps in a search for bogus applications that might have something in common with the installation of Your Captcha Now on your device. Pay special attention to apps that have been installed or updated somewhere around the time the hijacker has started to disturb you and Uninstall them if you believe they are part of the browser hijacking problem.

Next, close the Control Panel window and type msconfig in the windows search field. Select the first result and hit Enter. The System Configuration window will immediately pop-up on the screen:

In the Startup tab, uncheck any entries that you think have a relation to the browser hijacking activity you are experiencing. Do the same for entries that have “Unknown” Manufacturer or look suspicious, but make sur that you research them online first to ensure that you are not disabling an important Startup item related to the system.

Press the Windows and R keyboard keys together once again and  copy the following line in the Run box that opens on the screen:

notepad %windir%/system32/Drivers/etc/hosts

Click OK and you should see a new file named Hosts open. Scroll it until you find Localhost, then look at the image below:

If your Hosts file contains some strange IP addresses under Localhost, please write to us in the comments with a copy of the IPs that you see. If you see nothing suspicious, then proceed with the instructions that follow.

Search for Network Connections in the Windows search bar (in the Start menu) and open it.

• Tap on the Network Adapter that is currently in use and right-click it.
• Next, select Properties.
• In Properties, find the Internet Protocol Version 4 (ICP/IP), highlight it and click the  Properties button at the bottom.
• Select Obtain DNS server automatically and click on Advanced.
• In the Advanced window, select the DNS tab.
• Remove any rogue DNS in the field (as shown on image 4) 
• Once you are done, click OK to save the changes you have made.

• Now, lets remove Your Captcha Now and its traces from your browsers. If you are using more than one browser on your computer, make sure that you apply the instructions that follow to all of them.

Select the shortcut icon of the problematic browser and right-click on it. Next, select Properties.

NOTE: Google Chrome is used for demonstration purposes here, but you can apply the same steps for Firefox and IE (or Edge).

From the Properties window tap on the Shortcut tab.

In the Target section, carefully delete everything that has been added after .exe and click OK.

  Remove Your Captcha Now  from Internet Explorer:

If you have Internet Explorer installed on your computer, make sure that you do the following:

Open IE, click   > Manage Add-ons.

Disable any extensions that you believe are linked to Your Captcha Now .

Next, go to  > Internet Options. If the URL of the homepage has been changed by the browser hijacker,  delete it and type an address of your choice. Click on Apply before you close the window to save your changes.

 Remove Your Captcha Now  from Firefox:

In Firefox, the extensions tab can be reached if you click    > Add-ons > Extensions (on the left).

Again, search for potentially unwanted extensions that might have been installed by the browser hijacker without your approval and remove them.

Remove Your Captcha Now  from Chrome:

Next, close the browser and manually navigate to the following path:

 C:/Users/!!!!USER NAME!!!!/AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/User Data. Search for a folder called “Default” and once you find it, change its name to Backup Default.

Then, restart the browser.

One last step before you close this guide is to search the Registry of your computer for Your Captcha Now -related entries.

For that, you need to open the Registry Editor app, by typing Regedit in the windows search bar, selecting the result and pressing the Enter keyboard key.

Once the Editor app opens, press CTRL and F together to open a Find window. In it, type the name of the browser hijacker. Click on the Find Next button to start a search. If any entries are found with the name of the hijacker, right-click on them to delete them. Then, repeat the search again until no more entries are found.

After that, to ensure that there is nothing that might be left in the Registry, go manually to these directories and delete/uninstall anything that you find suspicious in 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

You can ask us in the comments for help if you aren’t sure about which entries need to be deleted.

Also, know that if the instructions in this guide aren’t enough to fully rid you of Your Captcha Now , you can download the anti-virus program we recommend or try our free online virus scanner.