searchpause.com is the given name of a browser hijacker, in other words, a program whose goal is to place itself as search website instead of whatever you had previously chosen for your default homepage. A browser hijacker quietly installs itself in your system along with some free software you downloaded from the net.
Actually there are several programs and websites like download.com that will get a money reward every time searchpause.com is installed into a user’s browser, that’s why its installation is done so discretely. searchpause.com is only legally installed if there is at least some sort of mention of it on the program that includes it as an additional feature; not complying to this will make them outlaws.
searchpause.com was developed in such a way that you won’t be able to go back to your own settings. It can be helped by a Windows service or process that will put it back in place every time you restart your computer.
Besides installing itself on your computer without ever asking for your approval, searchpause.com developers will also make money through you by inserting sponsored links among the the result pages of your searches. Both visits and searches done through searchpause.com will get them money.
This website was also created to show fake alerts about several imaginary issues. Those alerts will include a link that takes you to an e-commerce website where you’ll be asked to buy a software that allegedly will fix the problem. This e-vendor is usually the same one that created searchpause.com taking advantage then of every user they have tricked.
We have a clear example of this in the screenshot shown above where there’s a message implying that a Windows update is needed, when in truth that message will guide to user to buy a useless and hard to remove program: reimage.
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