SocialNewPage

Posted by Lisa Blanc on May 12, 2016

What is SocialNewPage?

SocialNewPage is a browser extension for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox that is supposed to help you login to your social network websites much faster. However, you ought to remove it because apart from providing links to those kinds of websites it will hijack your web browser’s homepage/new tab page and search provider. As a result, it will subject you to questionable content if you choose to perform searches online with it. In short, our malware researchers have classified this program as potentially unwanted. It may not be malicious, but the search engine it comes with might be, so we recommend that you do not test your luck and get rid of it. test test test

Where does SocialNewPage come from?

Some background information is always useful when determining whether a program is any good or not and here is what our researchers have found. SocialNewPage has a clone application called MediaNewPage which shares a similar name and functions, so it is also undesirable. The company that developed these two extensions is called Imali Media Ltd. This company is in the business of developing potentially unwanted software that is set to carry its browser hijackers. For example, it released a Chromium-based web browser called Internet Quick Access that comes with a custom search engine Search.internetquickaccess.com. This company is also responsible for releasing many browser hijackers that include Search.wondrousmoviessearch.com, Search.newtabtvsearch.com, and Safebrowsesearch.com. Imali Media’s website Imalimedia.net states that this company is “always striving to make the online advertising experience as simple and easy as possible in order to provide our partners with the most value.” So this company is in the online advertising business and promotes its partners’ content in a dishonest manner as you will find out in this article.

Before we move on to this application’s functionality, we want to reveal this program’s dissemination methods. Researchers have found that SocialNewPage’s main dissemination channel is a website at Socialnewpage.com that hosts the download of SocialNewPage Extension 0.1.9 for Firefox and Social New Page for Chrome. If you use Chrome, then if you visit this website it will redirect you to the Chrome Web Store. Unfortunately, shady programs are still uploaded to this store. According to the information found on Chrome Web Store, this extension was uploaded in mid-April, 2016 and currently it has close to 20,000 users. It can be said that this program is getting popular, so it is vital to get the truth about it to the rest of the Internet community. And, the truth is that it is no good.

How does SocialNewPage work?

Imali Media uses deceptive marketing tactics by stating “Learn what's up with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and more in one click. One-click search in social media sites.” So, basically, this browser extension is set to provide you with links to various social network sites. Such a function is a total disgrace and should make this company embarrassed. However, this function is just a front for the real purpose of SocialNewPage. It may not be clear at first, but this extension’s main objective is to hijack your browser’s homepage or new tab page and search provider.

The reason for hijacking these settings is simple: the developers want to impose their search engine on your browser to subject you to the commercial content that is to be included in the search results. Our researchers have found that this program changes the search engine to search.socialnewpagesearch.com, which redirects search queries to Search.safefinder.com. Furthermore, Search.safefinder.com uses Yahoo’s search algorithm to process the search queries, but here is the twist: Search.safefinder.com’s search results are set to include promotional links of Imali Media’s partners. However, there is no way to determine whether the promoted content is legitimate and safe. Our researchers say that it is quite likely that this search engine will subject you to illegitimate content such as malware downloads or scam websites. So we advise that you delete this browser extension.

How to remove SocialNewPage

To sum up, this browser extension is unreliable because it includes a questionable search engine that can subject you to potentially malicious content. Hence, this program’s real purpose is to make money for its developers by showing you ads in the search results of its search engine. Our researchers recommend that you remove this browser extension using the guide provided below.