Incosic.com

Posted by Max Lehmann on July 19, 2016

What is Incosic.com?

It seems as creating browser hijackers, such as Incosic.com, is still a lucrative business since new ones appear to emerge every single day. This hijacker looks like any innocent search pages at first sight. However, if you look closer, you may find out that this infection can introduce you to undesirable and potentially harmful web content. Engaging with anything provided by this search engine could lead to virtual security-related issues. If this were not enough, it is also possible that other malware threats have entered your system when you installed this browser hijacker. Our malware specialists at anti-spyware-101.com say that you should remove Incosic.com if you want to keep your computer clean of further threats. Let us share with you what we found during our research, including the potential risks this infection holds for you and your operating system. test

Where does Incosic.com come from?

Whenever a browser hijacker hits the web, it is quite likely that it is a clone of already existing and well-known hijackers. This infection, for example, seems to be identical to luckybeginning.com and mysites123.com among others. The distribution method is rather questionable and does not mean anything good for the victims of this hijacker. User reports and our research indicate that this malware is mostly spread through freeware bundles. The most likely way for you to download a malicious bundle is to click on a corrupt third-party advertisement or modified search results displayed by browser hijackers. The former situation can happen if you are viewing a suspicious website (gaming, torrent, freeware) or you have adware infection on board. So if you do not want to get infected with Incosic.com or any other browser hijackers, adware applications, and potentially unwanted programs, you should be very careful where you click; if at all.

Apart from clicking on the wrong advertisement, it is also very important to be alert while installing packages. Most installers offer you an opportunity to opt out of the installation of certain extra elements, programs, and changes. But if you fail to notice the checkboxes to be unticked, you may let several malware infections onto your computer. If this could have happened in your case, you should delete Incosic.com and run a full-system scan for other potential threats unless you want to make your system more vulnerable on the road to being totally crippled one day.

How does Incosic.com work?

When you install this hijacker, it may also install other useless and potentially unreliable tools that change your new tab settings in your browsers, including SupTab and QuickStart. But this browser hijacker also changes your home page and default search engine settings to make sure that you are exposed to its third-party promotions every time you launch your browsers or run a web search. This infection can also gather information about you that may not be personally identifiable, but still could be used and misused to create customized content for you. The developers of this unreliable search engine claim that this is to “improve the overall quality of your online experience” and to “offer you more relevant search results and ads.” However, our researchers say that it is more about the “ads” part since this is how this tool can generate income for its creators.

The Privacy Policy also confirms this by saying:

We also engage third party ad networks that may place cookies on your device when accessing and using our products that collect anonymous, non-personal information regarding your access and use. This information may be used by incosic.com and its third party ad network partners to identify and target related advertising to the user of such computer, when on our sites within the third party’s advertising network of sites.

You should know that this hijacker uses a modified and customized Google search results page to deliver the requested information to your screen. Unfortunately, even if this page looks like a legitimate Google page, you should never trust any content you find there. Incosic.com may promote potentially unreliable third parties through advertising and sponsored links as well. Clicking on such content could result in your redirection to malicious websites where you could be scammed by crooks. If you do not want to lose your money or virtual identity, you should remove Incosic.com as soon as possible.

How do I delete Incosic.com?

This infection seems to be rather intrusive and persistent, which can be noticed in the fact that it modifies your browser shortcuts’ Target lines to make sure that you cannot escape the exposure to this search page. Although you may find an uninstaller in Control Panel that can undo these changes, it still seems to leave leftovers in your browsers. Therefore, we have come up with a solution that can help you eliminate Incosic.com without a trace. Please follow our guide below if you are not familiar with changing your Target lines and resetting your browsers. Keep in mind that your PC may not become all healthy until you take care of all potential threats. If you do not want to go on a wild goose chase manually, we recommend that you use a professional anti-malware application that could protect you from all existing malicious attacks.

Restore the Target lines

Right-click on your browser shortcut on your desktop.
Select Properties and click on the General tab.
Make sure that the Read-only box is unchecked.
Choose the Shortcut tab and restore the Target line.
Press OK.
Right-click on the shortcut on your Taskbar.
Right-click on the browser name option at the bottom.
Repeat steps 2 to 5 to restore all the Target lines.

Remove Incosic.com from your browsers

Mozilla Firefox

Press Alt+H and choose Troubleshooting Information.
Press Refresh Firefox at the top and click Refresh Firefox again in the pop-up.
Click Finish.

Google Chrome