Positive Finds Ads, Powered by Positive Finds or Ad by Positive Finds are all tag lines you might notice in some ads if your PC is infected with a potentially unwanted program. In this particular case, the name of such a program is Positive Finds, and it was able to get into your system by taking advantage of some install of a free software or a fake update commonly found in streaming, P2P downloads or torrents websites.
The official site for Positive Finds describes the software as a tool offering the best known searching experience ever; as many unwanted programs Positive Finds is not even available to download in this site, the only purpose of it is to publish the General Conditions of Use.
These conditions are taken as accepted by the user simply because the tool is installed, and can’t be considered harmless. We present here the 3 main actions possible for Positive Finds:
- Change your browser’s parameters without any warning and at any given moment.
- Insert and show ads in every corner available of every website you visit.
- Save personal information that can be sold to their partners.
Nowadays, programs like Positive Finds are becoming more and more intrusive by the minute, they can save a lot more specific and sensible information about yourself. They are a real and grave threat to your privacy. Even though they are not malicious software per se, they can still save your personal info and sale them to their partners. You should know that all this data is usually meant to be used for marketing purposes with a high biding price.
Positive Finds makes no effort to show their lack of support for the “Do Not Track” rule.
This unwanted program installs it self into the most popular browsers (Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer). For each one of them it will add an extension, but it does not stop itself there, it also adds scheduled tasks and modifies Windows’ register to make sure it will be charged automatically
Most of the current unwanted programs like Positive Finds, get into your computer following one of your own actions, or perhaps we should say the lack of action while installing software. They take advantage of downloads of popular software like VLC; Winzip, Flash Player, Java, etc… Some websites add this kind of unwanted programs to the setup programs of the known software, if you go too fast while installing you can quickly become the host of many annoyances like this one.
Here’s a screen-shot of one setup program trying to install Positive Finds… Please notice how the “Next” button is placed in such a manner that your attention goes there without really noticing the rest:
Some useful tips to avoid the install of either spywares or adwares are:
- Download any software (or update) only from official websites or secure websites.
- Read carefully and thoroughly all information shown in your screen while installing (and make sure to use the advanced options so you can refuse any additional software they might try to impose on you).
- Install only software you actually need or know.
- When you are looking of an specific software on the net, don’t install anything offered in ads.