OFFER*Source of claim SH can remove it.
Top Captcha Today
Top Captcha Today is a type of unwanted Windows software that will force your browser to send you to sites that will fill your screen with ads. Top Captcha Today can change the addresses of your homepage and search engine in order to facilitate the ad-generation.
If you are struggling to get rid of Top Captcha Today and need help with its removal, we can offer you exactly that inside our guide available at the bottom. However, we would first advise you to read this article, or at least come back to it once you remove Top Captcha Today, in order to learn more about the characteristics of this unwanted software and find out about the different dangers related to it.
The Top Captcha Today Virus
The Top Captcha Today virus is a browser hijacker and its goal is to invade commonly-used browsers like Firefox, Edge, Chrome, Opera, and others and to fill them with ads and page-redirect links. The people who create and own apps like the Top Captcha Today virus earn money from their ads by applying remuneration models such as Pay-Per-View and Pay-Per-Click.
Basically, this means that each time a site promoted by the hijacker gets opened in your browser and each time you click on an advert generated by Top Captcha Today, the developers of this unwanted application earn money. Of course, the amount of money earned for a single click or site visit is minuscule, but on a larger scale, with thousands of computers that have the hijacker installed on them, the profit starts to build up and could accumulate some quite sizable sums. Understandably, the developers of Top Captcha Today would be interested in spamming you with as many ads and redirects as possible and also in keeping their app attached to your browser for as long as possible. This ensures that the revenue generated from the hijacker is maximized. Needles to say, this all comes at the expense of the end-users’ patience and undisturbed online experience.
TopCaptchaToday.top
While the ad-generating activity of the TopCaptchaToday.top doesn’t harm the computer and the changes introduced to the browser don’t cause any damage to the system, users need to remember that the fact they have TopCaptchaToday.top installed in their browser could potentially increase the chances of encountering more dangerous forms of software in the future. The reason for this is that the control over the safety levels of the advertised content is almost non-existent with most browser hijackers.
As long as a given site earns them revenue when advertised, the creators of apps like Top Captcha Today, Top Captcha Solver , Captcha Cool Now won’t really care if or how safe said site is. This, in turn, could lead to some serious issues for your computer because the risk of landing on sites that spread illegal software or viruses like Trojans, Worms, or Ransomware increases.
Our advice for you, if you want to keep your computer out of harm and prevent it from getting attacked by Ransomware, Trojans or other forms of hazardous programs, is to waste no time and try completing the following removal guide for Top Captcha Today right away. If you do everything correctly, the hijacker should be gone from your PC in a matter of minutes.
SUMMARY:
| Name | Top Captcha Today |
| Type | Browser Hijacker |
| Detection Tool | We tested that SpyHunter successfully removes parasite* and we recommend downloading it. Manual removal may take hours, it can harm your system if you re not careful, and parasite may reinstall itself at the end if you don't delete its core files. |
*Source of claim SH can remove it.
Remove Top Captcha Today Virus
To remove Top Captcha Today from the infected system, you must first clean all browsers that it may have affected.
- First go to the main browser, click on its menu, and access the Extensions manager.
- If there are any extensions installed by the hijacker in the browser, uninstall them.
- Also delete any other potentially unwanted extensions that you may find.
- To completely remove Top Captcha Today, you should repeat these steps with all other browsers on the computer.
Hopefully, this will be enough to make the hijacker disappear from your browsers and PC. Unfortunately, there could be other changes in the system that allow Top Captcha Today to remain on the computer. Therefore, if you are still having problems with this browser hijacker, the advanced removal guidelines below will allow you to fully get rid of it.
Advanced Top Captcha Today Removal Instructions
Before you start completing the steps below, it would be a great idea to bookmark the current page – PC and browser restarts would be required during the guide and this will allow you to easily find the page later. Another thing you could do is simply open it on another device such as your smartphone and look at it from there.
Step 1: Uninstall rogue programs
The most typical way undesirable software like Top Captcha Today gets in users’ systems is through being bundled with a seemingly harmless and useful program that contains the hijacker in its installation file. Once that other program is installed, the hijacker is automatically added to the browser. In such cases, you may have to delete the “carrier” program to get rid of the hijacker.
Go to Start Menu > Control Panel > Uninstall a Program. In that list of programs, if there are any suspicious entries installed around the time of the hijacker’s appearance on your PC, click on the suspicious program(s) and then on the Uninstall button at the top. Proceed with the uninstallation, making sure that everything related to the program gets removed.
Step 2: Kill suspicious processes
WARNING! READ CAREFULLY BEFORE PROCEEDING!
Use the search field below the Start Menu to search for the Task Manager utility and open it. In the tab named Processes, look for items that are not related to programs that are running at the moment on the computer and yet are using up large amounts of memory and CPU. Google (or Bing, Yahoo, etc.) the name of any such processes and if the results suggest that they might be linked to the hijacker or to another unwanted program, right-click on them and select the File Location option.
Use the free scanner we’ve prepared for you right below to scan the files from the File Location:
If malware is detected in any of the scanned files, quit the suspicious process (click on it then click End process), and delete its Location folder. If an error message prevents you from deleting it, leave this for now and try again later once you’ve completed the other steps.
Step 3: Use Safe Mode
Get your PC into Safe Mode to help prevent Top Captcha Today from running any of its processes that you may have not killed during the previous step. The guide we’ve linked will assist you with that if you need help enabling Safe Mode.
Step 4: Restore the DNS settings
If Top Captcha Today has made changes in the DNS settings of your computer/the network you normally use, you must revoke those changes.
Start by going to the Control Panel once again, clicking on Network and Internet, and then opening the Internet and Sharing Center settings. From there, click on the name of the network that your PC is using at the moment. Now go to its Properties, select the Internet Protocol Version 4 item, and click on Properties again. In the next window, the Obtain an IP address automatically option should be selected – if it isn’t, then select it and then continue to the Advanced options. There, open the DNS settings and if there are IPs listed there, Remove them. Save all changes you’ve made by clicking on OK on each window.
Step 5: Clean the Hosts file
Access the Hosts file of your computer by typing/copy-pasting this “notepad %windir%/system32/Drivers/etc/hosts” in the Start Menu and hitting the Enter key.
In the text of the file, see if you notice strange IPs at the bottom and if you do, copy-paste them in the comments below. We will have a look at them and tell you if Top Captcha Today is responsible for placing them there. If that turns out to be the case, you will need to delete them from the file, and then Save it.
Step 6: Block rogue startup items
Search for the System Configuration utility in the Start Menu and open it. Check the Startup tab for hijacker items – anything that looks like Top Captcha Today may have added it there as well as anything that you are unfamiliar with. Uncheck those items and then click OK to save the changes to the Startup items.
Step 7: Registry Cleanup
A word of warning: Though not very likely, it is possible that you may delete something important to your system if you are not careful during this step. Because of this, any time you doubt about the nature of a given item and about whether it must be deleted, it’s preferable to first request our opinion on it through the comments section below and then act in accordance with our reply to your comment.
Open the Registry Editor app by opening the Start Menu, typing regedit in it, and selecting the icon labelled regedit.exe.
You will have to confirm that you want to open it and allow it to make system changes so click on Yes when asked for confirmation. After that, press the Ctrl and F keys on the keyboard to evoke the Registry Editor search box. In it, type the name of the unwanted software (in this case that would be Top Captcha Today).
Begin the search and delete whatever item is found. Do another search, delete the next found item and proceed in the same manner until no items related to Top Captcha Today remain.
Next, check the following Registry Editor locations for suspicious items and delete what you find:
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Random Directory.
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Internet Explorer/Main
Note: You’ve already deleted everything that may have Top Captcha Today in its name so don’t look for such items. Instead, look for ones with unusual names such as names that are way too long and/or are composed of randomized symbols. Here, we once again remind you to not hesitate to ask us in the comments if you are unsure about something.
Step 8: Do another cleanup of your browsers
Even if you did as we instructed you at the start and deleted any unwanted extensions from your browser, you should once again check every browser on your computer for remnants of the hijacker.
Start by right-clicking on the icon of any of your browsers (preferably starting with the main one) and going to its Properties. In there, open the Shortcut section, click in the Target field, and look if there’s anything written after “.exe” – if there is, delete it.
Next, start the browser in question, click on the menu (the majority of browsers have their menu buttons in either top corner of the screen) and click on the Extensions or Add-ons option. If you are currently in Chrome, first select More Tools and there you will see the Extensions option.
Just like at the start of the guide, explore the different browser extensions and if any of them seem related to Top Captcha Today and/or haven’t been installed by you, disable them and then click on the Remove button to delete them. Disabling them first may be necessary because, in some cases, the extension won’t go away unless disabled first.
Open the menu again, click on Settings (or Options if you are in Firefox), go to the Privacy and Security settings page, and in it find and select an option labelled Clear browsing data. Microsoft Edge users must click on Choose what to clear.
From the pop-up window that appears, make sure that all boxes except the one relating to the user’s Passwords are ticked and then select Clear Now. The data cleanup may take several minutes if the browser hasn’t been cleaned recently so don’t quit it until the process completes.
What if Top Captcha Today is still there?
In some cases, not even the advanced steps we’ve shown may be enough to fully delete everything related to Top Captcha Today from your system. If that is your situation, the best solution is to use a reliable anti-malware tool that can clean your computer for you. You can find one such powerful tool in the guide above – we highly recommend using it as it can not only rid you of the hijacker in a matter of moments, but it can also keep the system safe from unwanted software and malware in the future.
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