What is Photor?
Our malware analysts say that Photor is an unreliable application. They have classified it as a potentially unwanted program (PUP) because its developers use it for deceptive advertising purposes. It hijacks the homepage address and replaces it with its featured shady search engine that will show you promotional links in the search results, but the links can redirect you to deceptive websites, and that is a huge concern. Therefore, you ought to remove this application. Furthermore, this application can keep tabs on your browsing-related information and use it to present you with links that fit your personal interests. However, they do not present personalized links for you. No. They want to generate more ad revenue, and the more clicks, the more money the developers make.
Where does Photor come from?
The reality is that there is no way to determine the origins of this program. Our security experts have found that Photor was created by Photor Ltd. Hence, the program name doubles as a company name which is not registered anywhere, so it is more than likely that the company name is fake. Our malware analysts say that this program was created by an unknown group of developers and it may take some time to figure out if they have released any other programs before.
As far as the distribution methods regarding this particular application go, researchers, say that you can get Photor from its dedicated promotional and distributional website at Photorext.net. This site claims that this program/browser extension will improve your browsing experience by changing the background image of the homepage address. The website is minimalistic and simple and looks like it was set up quite fast. Apart from this dedicated website, you can get this application from the Chrome Web Store which states that this program has more than 5,200 users. This program’s creators do not use any deceptive distribution tactics as you can get this program only if you download it intentionally.
What does Photor do?
However, there are things about Photor that you have no control of. Researchers say that this program does not allow you to deselect the implementation of its accompanying search engine that seems to be an integral part of this browser extension. This program is set to carry a search engine intentionally which replaces the homepage address of Google Chrome — the only compatible browser. It seems that its true objective is to show you promotional links while at the same time it can actually change the homepage background image every six hours. Nevertheless, there is no justification for keeping this extension as its ads and promoted links come from unknown and, thus, untrustworthy sources. Furthermore, its featured search engine is hosted on the some domain as Socopoco.com, Social-enhancer.com, and Pro-search.me, among others that have been classified as browser hijackers, and this can be taken as a hint suggesting who the developers really are.
Our malware analysts have concluded that Photor and its accompanying browser extension will collect some information about you in order to present you with customized search results that you are more likely to click because this extension is all about generating ad revenue. The collected information can include your Internet Service Provider (ISP,) IP address, browsing history, operating system type, approximate location, and so on. The collection of this information is legal, but given how unreliable this program is, you might not want to share it.
How to remove Photor
We hope you found this article useful and are now ready to get rid of it because keeping it not safe, to say the least. Deleting Photor is a simple matter of removing it from the list of your browser’s extensions. We have included a guide below for those who do not know how to delete a browser extension.
Removal Guide
- Open Google Chrome.
- Press Alt+F.
- Click Settings and select Extensions.
- Locate the Photor.
- Click Remove.
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