FreeSportSearch – What is it?

“FreeSportSearch” search hijacker is a potentially unwanted application (PUA)¹, that is spread as a plugin for your internet browser. It is typically advertised as an add-on for Chrome or Firefox, that assists to search some particular details, for example, about sporting activity events, make your browser much more secure, allow downloading of any web video, and so on. Also, this app adds the “Managed by your organization” feature (on Chrome browsers).

Nevertheless, the “FreeSportSearch” plugin is fairly ineffective because all such functions are already embedded to your browser and/or Windows. Such advertising and marketing slogans are targeted at low-skilled computer users, for example, pensioners or schoolchildren. But frequently even professional users are getting caught on such an appeal. In particular instances, this hijacker is distributed together with free software.

How harmful is FreeSportSearch hijacker?

Besides its impracticality, FreeSportSearch hijacker is additionally considerably hazardous for web browser utilization. It modifies your search engine to its specific – Freesportsearch.com, and also changes your background, adding its watermark on your background image (or, sometimes, altering it to default with the mentioned symptom).

Apart from aesthetic changes done by FreeSportSearch hijacker, you can discover that a couple of your search queries are redirecting to the untrustworthy sites, filled with links and promotions – so-called doorway sites. Such websites can include web links for malware downloads. The possibility of redirecting rises if you try to start Google search page forcibly.

But all these actions are much more bothersome than truly damaging. The biggest danger, specifically for people who have a considerable amount of confidential information in their browsers, is embedded in information gathering capabilities. Cookie files, conversations, often-visited sites, as well as other activities are simply collected by FreeSportSearch hijacker.