Payment information leaked
“Payment information leaked” is an unwanted program that can hijack any browser and redirect traffic from it to different pages. To accomplish its goal, “Payment information leaked” adds a new search engine to your main web browser and updates the address of your homepage.
Users who want to surf the web safely and without unnecessary interruptions and disturbance should keep their browsers clean of questionable add-ons and extensions that can potentially interfere with their online experience and make changes to their web browsing settings. Sadly, there are too many applications online that can mess with the users’ browsers and “Payment information leaked” is one of them.
No matter what browser you use – Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari, this potentially unwanted program can get integrate with any of them and make it less protected and more vulnerable to online hazards such as viruses, ransomware, Trojans and other malware. Due to this behavior, “Payment information leaked” is recognized as a browser hijacker and is typically removed from the system without regrets.
A browser hijacker is the term for unwanted applications and plugins that can be installed in the browser and unpleasantly manage their settings (Captcha Source Center, iStart Search Bar). A typical hijacker feature is that these apps strive to display hundreds of advertisements (pop-ups, banners, promotional links and messages, etc.) and redirect the users to some pre-defined web pages. Such apps can even change the browser’s default search engine and the homepage and install some helper components that facilitate the excessive generation of ads on every page that is loaded.
All these changes are aimed at benefiting the browser hijacker’s developers from clicks and visits on different paid online commercials and links. These apps’ advertisements are not intended to damage your device or do something wrong with the files stored on it. However, this does not mean that they can’t expose your computer to real malware threats and viruses that could potentially harm your device and your data. A click on a fake pop-up message or a misleading link can easily invite a ransomware, a Trojan or a similar computer infection in the system without your knowledge. That’s why we advise you to take the required precautions and uninstall the unwanted app before some malware manages to snap inside your device by taking advantage of the security weaknesses that the hijacker causes in your system.
You will probably need some help to remove “Payment information leaked”, though, because most applications of this type cannot be easily uninstalled. In general, all the browser hijacker components need to be completely removed from the system in order for the hijacker’s activity to be disabled. Detecting those helper components, however, may require the assistance of a professional removal tool or a detailed removal guide. That’s why our suggestion for you is to take a look at the instructions that we have published below and make use of the manual steps and the automatic removal program if this is the first time you are dealing with a browser hijacker like “Payment information leaked” and don’t know how to handle it. Once you complete the steps, you can safely restore the default settings of your web browser and say bye-bye to the nagging pop-up ads, banners, redirect links and unwanted homepage and search engine changes that this software has imposed without your approval.
SUMMARY:
| Name | “Payment information leaked” |
| Type | Adware |
| Detection Tool | Some threats reinstall themselves if you don't delete their core files. We recommend downloading SpyHunter to remove harmful programs for you. This may save you hours and ensure you don't harm your system by deleting the wrong files. |
Remove “Payment information leaked”
To remove “Payment information leaked” from your computer, you must first check the browser for unwanted add-ons that have been added to it by this hijacker.
- Start by going to your main browser’s menu and selecting the Extensions settings.
- There, look for anything that has been added to the browser without your approval and disable it.
- Delete the extensions that you disabled in order to remove “Payment information leaked” from the browser.
- If you have more than one browser on the computer, clean the other ones in the same manner.
If those short steps didn’t solve the problem, this means that “Payment information leaked” has made additional changes in the system which prevent you from removing it. You must revoke those changes in order to delete the hijacker. The more detailed steps below will show you how to do this.
Step 1: Save this page
*Read more details in the first ad on this page, EULA, Privacy Policy, and full terms for Free Remover.
Some of the instructions that will follow will require that you quit the browser and restart the computer. To save time, you could bookmark this page to make finding it later easier. Of course, you can also have it open on your phone and look at the guide from it while completing the steps on the computer.
Step 2: Uninstall unwanted software
WARNING! READ CAREFULLY BEFORE PROCEEDING!
*Read more details in the first ad on this page, EULA, Privacy Policy, and full terms for Free Remover.
Most hijackers get installed alongside some other questionable software, so you must first go to the Control Panel from the Start Menu, click on Uninstall a Program and check the list of apps and programs for anything unwanted. Remove any items installed around the time of the hijacker’s first appearance and make sure that the uninstallation deletes everything, including saved program settings and other temporary data.
Step 3: Find the hijacker process
Access your Task Manager by pressing together Control, Alt, and Delete and selecting the Task Manager button. Then look at the entries in the Processes tab and if any of them look potentially related to “Payment information leaked” and also consume large portions of your system’s RAM and CPU, then you must look the names of those processes on the Internet to learn if they might be from the hijacker. If your search gives you reason to believe a given process in the Task Manager shouldn’t be there, right-click on the process, go to its File Location and scan everything there for malicious code. For that, you can use the advanced free scanner that is posted below:
If anything gets flagged as a security threat, then you must go to the process, click it, and select the End Process button.
Then delete the File Location Folder. In case you get an error message when you try to do this, enter the folder again, try to delete from it whatever files you can, and go to Step 4. You must return to the File Location folder and try to delete it again once the rest of this guide has been completed.
Step 4 Safe Mode
You must restart your PC into Safe Mode to keep the hijacker from launching any processes that you didn’t manage to manually stop during the previous step. Use the guide from the link to help you launch the system into Safe Mode if you are not sure how to do it.
Step 5: Clean the Hosts file
Find out if the hijacker has manipulated the Hosts file of your PC by pasting the following line in the Start Menu and pressing the Enter key: notepad %windir%/system32/Drivers/etc/hosts.
If the hijacker has made changes in this file, there will typically be strange IP addresses below the Localhost line at the bottom of the text. If you see anything there, copy it and send it to us in the comments. We will have a look at it and tell you if it is from the hijacker (in which case you will have to delete it from the file and save the changes).
Step 6: Restore DNS settings
To check the DNS settings and revoke unwanted changes made in them by “Payment information leaked”, type network connections in the Start Menu, hit Enter, and right-click on the icon of the network that you are currently using. Select Properties from the context menu, find and select the Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) item, and select Properties again. Enable the Obtain DNS server option in case it isn’t enabled, then go to Advanced and select the DNS tab. If there are any IPs listed there, you must delete them and then click OK on everything.
Step 7: Delete unwanted startup items
The startup items of your system are programs and apps that will start on their own as soon as Windows boots up. It is possible that “Payment information leaked” has a startup item of its own that allows the hijacker to start automatically on system boot up. Therefore, type msconfig in the Start Menu and press enter to go to the System Configuration utility. In it, select Startup and see what items are listed there. Anything unfamiliar, potentially unwanted, or with an unknown developer should be disabled by having its respective checkbox unticked. After you uncheck all suspicious entries, select OK.
Step 8: Clean the Registry Editor
Warning: deleting the wrong items during this step may cause system instability and other problems with your PC. Therefore, you are advised to first ask us in the comments about items you think should be deleted but are not certain about.
Go to the Start Menu and type regedit in it. Open the regedit.exe app and when asked for Admin permission click on Yes.
In the Registry Editor utility, select Edit from the top, then Find, and type the hijacker’s name in the search box. Press Enter to begin the search and delete the item that gets found (if an item is found).
Then search for the next item, delete it, and repeat this process until no more items get found. After that, find these directories in the left panel:
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Random Directory.
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Internet Explorer/Main
In them, delete any folders (keys) that seem odd and questionable. A common example of an item that must be deleted from those directories is a folder with a name that’s significantly longer than the rest and that consists of random letters and/or numbers. Still, it’s advisable that you first ask us in the comments about any such items in those directories that you think may need to be removed.
Step 9: Clean the browsers
If the short steps at the start were not detailed enough, here are some more detailed instructions on how to clean your browsers. Even if you managed to clean them at the start, we still recommend checking them one more time to make sure that there’s nothing left from the hijacker in them. Besides, we’ve added some additional cleaning procedures here. These next instructions apply for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and most other browsers:
You must first start by going to the icon of your browser, right-clicking it, and selecting Properties. From there, select Shortcut, and click inside the Target field. See if there’s anything written after “.exe” and if there is, delete it from the Target box.
Next, start the browser and select its main menu – for Chrome and Edge that is an icon with three dots in the upper-right corner of the screen and for Firefox the icon is with three lines.
From there, go to the Extensions/Add-ons settings. In Chrome, you must first click on More Tools and there you will see the button for the Extensions settings.
Once you see the list of browser extensions, disable the ones that haven’t been added by you or by anyone else who uses the same computer and then select the Remove button for each of the disabled extensions/add-ons to delete them.
Next, return to the browser menu and go to Settings/Options.
From there select the Privacy and Security settings, find the Delete Browsing Data option and select it. In Edge, you will have to click on the Choose what to clear button.
Check all the boxes except the ones related to the Passwords and then click on Clear Now to delete the temporary browsing data. Make sure that this is done for every browser, including the ones you normally don’t use or the ones that don’t seem affected by the hijacker.
What if the hijacker is still there?
If despite completing all steps as they are shown “Payment information leaked” still seems to be present in the system, a great way to have it uninstalled is to use the removal tool from this page. It is a powerful anti-malware program tested against such hijackers that can quickly find and get rid of all “Payment information leaked” data. In addition, it also offers strong protection against advenced malware such as Trojans or Spyware so it will also keep your system safe while you are on the Internet.