Web Companion (Lavasoft Imposter)

Web Companion

Web Companion is an browser extension-like app developed by Lavasoft and it is a free tool which is supposed to help you with adware, browser hijackers and other similar unwanted software elements that can get installed in your browser and interrupt your online experience. However, ironically, Web Companion is, in fact, regarded as a PUP (potentially unwanted program) by a number of software security researchers and specialists due to a number of unpleasant traits and features that it seems to possess.

Web Companion by Lavasoft

In the next lines, we will go over the most glaring examples of why this app is actually a PUP and why you might want to uninstall it. Also, for those of you who actually have Web Companion on their machines and would like to have it taken away, we have a removal guide that we’ve posted further down this page. You can use it if you like in order to eliminate the PUP or you can resort to the recommended removal tool that’s in the guide. Using both the manual instructions from the guide and the removal program is also an option and it is actually what we’d advise you to do in order to make sure that there’s indeed nothing left of the pesky app on your computer.

What is Web Companion by Lavasoft?

First and foremost, we must make it clear what Web Companion is not. Web Companion is not a virus program – it is not a Trojan Horse infection, a Ransomware cryptovirus, a sneaky Spyware program or some other kind of malicious and illegal piece of software that can be used to harm you and your PC. On the contrary, albeit being a PUP, this program is perfectly legal and legitimate and it might even prove to be useful in a number of situations.

The reason most specialists regard it as a PUP is not because it is useless and doesn’t do what it is supposed to but because it actually uses similar techniques and has similar features to the ones that possessed by the very types of software that it is supposed to protect your browser against.

But what’s the thing about this program that really makes it unwanted?

Well, to put it simple, Web Companion functions as a browser add-on-like app – it gets installed in your browser and from there it tries to fend off different unwanted software components such as Adware and Browser Hijackers and prevent them from getting inside your browser, messing with its settings and spamming you with obnoxious ads. Web Companion also seeks to protect you against potentially hazardous web-addresses and keep you away from nay type of online content that might be regarded as questionable. So far, so good. However, and this is where the main problem is, the add-on component that Web Companion installs in your browser, in and of itself, functions very similarly to an app of the Adware or of the Browser Hijacker category. It might display ads on your screen on a regular basis, change certain elements of the browser you use such as its starting page, the search engine, the toolbar and so on. This typically happens to popular browsers like Chrome, IE and Firefox but it’s possible that it might also occur on other browsers as well. In addition to all that, Web Companion might also try to promote other products by Lavasoft and prompt you to download and install them. In many cases, the promoted products would be paid ones and if you opt for downloading them, you may also need to pay a certain amount of money to actually purchase the rights to use them. With this all in mind, it should be rather obvious why there are a lot of people out there who do not really want to have this software tool on their computers.

Avoiding PUPs in the future

Programs like Web Companion oftentimes have their official sites and users can download them from there. However, such free tools also tend to use other methods of distribution as well in order to get to as many users as possible and thus increase the profits from their ads. A very common technique used by software developers that seek to increase the number of PCs that have their products installed on them is the file-bundling method. This is when a given app is included as a bonus element in the installation package of some other program. Users can typically leave out the extra component but to do that they usually need to access the Advanced setup option from within the installation manager and manually opt out of the added/bundled component’s installation. It is very important that you do that each and every time you are about to install a new program on your computer, especially if that new program is free, so as to avoid landing some undesirable PUP.

SUMMARY:

Web Companion Removal

You are dealing with a malware infection that can restore itself unless you remove its core files. We are sending you to another page with a removal guide that gets regularly updated. It covers in-depth instructions on how to:
1. Locate and scan malicious processes in your task manager.
2. Identify in your Control panel any programs installed with the malware, and how to remove them. Search Marquis is a high-profile hijacker that gets installed with a lot of malware.
3. How to clean up and reset your browser to its original settings without the malware returning.
You can find the removal guide here.
For mobile devices refer to these guides instead: Android, iPhone.