Flowdeal
Flowdeal is a type of page-redirecting app that installs in popular browsers like Firefox and Chrome. Flowdeal will change the search engine of the browser in order to show you more ads in the search results and will automatically redirect you to unknown sites.
A browser hijacker can greatly obstruct your online activities by flooding your screen with various ads, pop-ups, and box messages and by constantly page-redirecting your tabs to potentially unsafe sites. The good news is that dealing with this sort of software shouldn’t be that difficult, especially if you make use of the instructions available on this page. Before we get to them, however, we need to tell you a bit more about this type of adds, mainly focusing on the newly released Flowdeal hijacker.
SUMMARY:
| Name | Flowdeal |
| Type | Browser Hijacker |
| Danger Level | Medium (nowhere near threats like Ransomware, but still a security risk) |
| Symptoms | Browser hijackers alter the homepage of the browser and trigger page-redirects to ad-heavy sites. |
| Distribution Method | File bundles are usually used to carry a hijacker that is presented as a useful bonus app. |
| Detection Tool |
Please follow all the steps below in order to remove Flowdeal!
How to remove Flowdeal
- First, click the Start Menu on your Windows PC.
- Type Programs and Settings in the Start Menu, click the first item, and find Flowdeal in the programs list that would show up.
- Select Flowdeal from the list and click on Uninstall.
- Follow the steps in the removal wizard.
Read more…
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 Flowdeal.
- If you find any of the programs suspicious then uninstall them if they turn out to be linked to Flowdeal.
- 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 Flowdeal from Chrome
- Click on the three dots in the right upper corner
- Go to more tools
- Now select extensions
- Remove the Flowdeal extension
Read more…
- 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 Flowdeal 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 Flowdeal on FF/Edge/etc.
- Open the browser and select the menu icon.
- From the menu, click on the Add-ons button.
- Look for the Flowdeal extension
- Get rid of Flowdeal by removing it from extensions
Read more…
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 “Flowdeal” or another unwanted app, change it to an address that you’d want to be the browser’s new-tab page.
How to Delete Flowdeal
- Open task manager
- Look for the Flowdeal process
- Select it and click on End task
- Open the file location to delete Flowdeal
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- 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 “Flowdeal” 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 accuracyThis scanner is free and will always remain free for our website's users.This file is not matched with any known malware in the database. You can either do a full real-time scan of the file or skip it to upload a new file. Doing a full scan with 64 antivirus programs can take up to 3-4 minutes per file.
Drag and Drop File Here To Scan
Analyzing 0 sEach file will be scanned with up to 64 antivirus programs to ensure maximum accuracyThis scanner is based on VirusTotal's API. By submitting data to it, you agree to their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and to the sharing of your sample submission with the security community. Please do not submit files with personal information if you do not want them to be shared. - 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 Flowdeal
- Click on the home button
- Search for Startup Apps
- Look for Flowdeal in there
- Uninstall Flowdeal from Startup Apps by turning it off
Read more…
- 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 Flowdeal 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
A browser hijacker like Flowdeal or Urambled can enter pretty much any browser – Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and so on – and install in them a new search engine that replaces the default one and shows you more ads than actual results. The homepage of the browser is also likely to get changed by the hijacker so that every time you go on the Internet you would be generating a visit to some site that the hijacker is trying to promote.
The browser hijackers aren’t dangerous like Ransomware, Spyware, or other threats. The whole purpose of these unwanted applications is the online promotion of different sites, services, web stores, and so on. However, in order to be effective at their job, most hijackers resort to some rather aggressive advertising techniques. Take for example the ads they display – most of them would be placed over the parts of the web page that are likely to be of most interest to you. If you are reading an article or watching a video, the ad would probably obscure them, thus forcing you to click on it to get it out of the way. Of course, this will solve nothing in the long term as the ads will keep on coming to obstruct you. Also, in some cases, you could get directly redirected to a given site without clicking on anything or the redirect links would appear over the buttons on a page so instead of clicking on the given button, you would be interacting with a link that will land you on some other sites. These, and other similar sneaky tactics employed by apps like Flowdeal are one of the main reasons why the browser hijackers are seen as unwanted.
Problem with this sort of software is that it won’t allow you to choose some of your browser’s settings once it has altered them. For instance, a hijacker will likely not allow you to change back your search engine or starting page address, or if it does, it will re-impose the ones it introduced to your browser in the first place as soon as you start the browsing program again. The only effective way to stop all that is to uninstall the hijacker and remove all of its components from your system. Luckily, since you aren’t dealing with a Trojan, a Ransomware, or some other actual threatening malware, doing so shouldn’t be too difficult, especially if you follow our guide.
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