Houmpage.com Removal Guide

Houmpage.com is a useless search engine that can be set in your browsers as your home page even without your permission, i.e., silently. Due to its ability to make such changes we have labeled it as a browser hijacker. This hijacker can affect all major browsers; therefore, you will be exposed to its questionable search results if you use Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer as well. Right now it seems that it does not infect Microsoft Edge, but sooner or later this might change. A lot of users may not even consider this hijacker a threat since they think that this is just a simple search engine like Google.com. So why should they bother? Well, you need to understand that this hijacker can spy on you and expose you to potentially unsafe websites. Therefore, your virtual security may be at risk if you leave it on board. Without a doubt, you should remove Houmpage.com if you want to protect your PC from further malware attacks.

We have not found any websites promoting this hijacker as a standalone installer. This can only mean that the publisher has chosen alternative methods to spread this infection on the net. Reports prove that this hijacker is mostly distributed with bad downloaders. It is enough to activate such a downloader and this search engine will be set in your browsers silently in the background. Of course, it will not stay hidden too long since the next time you launch your browsers, the change will be quite obvious. It is most likely to find bad downloaders on questionable file-sharing websites. That is why you should be careful about your web surfing habits. It is quite possible that you do not only have this hijacker on board but the downloader may have installed other malware programs as well. You may have noticed, for instance, annoying third-party ads while you were browsing. You need to know that most of the malware infections may expose you and the content of your computer to cyber criminals in different ways. Therefore, it is important that you delete Houmpage.com and all other potential threats you may find on your computer.

You may try to manually locate and identify malware threats. For example, you can check the Task Manager to see if there is any suspicious process running that you can end. Then, you can also go through the installed programs list in Control Panel as well as the extension or add-on lists in your browsers. Whatever you find questionable, you can always check by using our search box at the top or any decent search engine, too. However, you should know that this way you can only find adware applications, browser hijackers, and potentially unwanted programs; but what about the much more dangerous Trojans, backdoors, and rootkits? In order to detect all the threats, it is always best to use a reliable malware scanner if you do not have a proper security tool installed.

Apart from the search box on this search page you can also find several easy-access buttons to popular websites, such as Facebook, eBay, and Twitter. These are like little baits to make you leave this hijacker in your browsers. But, if you use this search engine, you need to be prepared to end up on malicious websites. As a matter of fact, this tool does not even use its own search results, but, instead, it redirects you to search.smartshopping.com. However, this hijacker can alter the search results and include certain third parties’ commercial advertisements and sponsored links. Unfortunately, third parties are never guaranteed to be trustworthy. If you click on a compromised link, you may find yourself redirected to a malicious website. It is also possible that new tab pages open with all kinds of affiliated websites that may also be potentially dangerous. All in all, you should not hesitate to remove Houmpage.com from your computer if you want to avoid virtual security issues, not to mention privacy breaches. Speaking of which, you should know that the simple presence of this browser hijacker is actually a breach of your privacy since you most probably did not let it on board knowingly.

We have found that this hijacker is identical to safesurfs.com, esurf.biz, your-home-page.net, and foryourweb.net. This application also makes it a bit tricky to get rid of it by changing the browsers’ shortcut Target lines appending “http://houmpage.com/?ssid=1444318045&a=1008179” to the end. Therefore, it is best to restore your Target lines first because, if you leave this step out, this hijacker will come back to haunt you every time you launch your browsers. After dealing with this issue, you can reset all your browsers to make sure that no leftovers remain. If you would like to protect your computer from similar malware attacks, we recommend that you use a trustworthy malware removal application.

How to remove Houmpage.com

Restore the Target line

1. Right-click on the browser shortcut and select Properties.
2. On the General tab, uncheck the Read-only box if it is checked.
3. Click on the Shortcut tab and in the Target line, delete the URL address after the quotation marks.
4. Press OK.

How to reset browsers

Google Chrome

1. Press Alt+F and go to Settings.
2. Scroll down and click Show advanced settings.
3. Scroll down again and click Reset settings.
4. Press Reset.

Mozilla Firefox

1. Press Alt+H and navigate to Troubleshooting Information.
2. Click Refresh Firefox.
3. Press Refresh Firefox in the confirmation window.
4. Press Finish.

Internet Explorer

1. Press Alt+T and go to Internet Options.
2. Click on the Advanced tab and press Reset.
3. Tick the Delete personal settings checkbox.
4. Press Reset and press Close.