Amazon Assistant Virus - How to remove

Amazon Assistant is an official application from the famous internet retailer. You can voluntarily download it on Amazon.com, your browser’s extension store, or get it as a consequence of inattentive web surfing and shareware installation. It supports all operating systems and their browsers.

Despite being a real creation of the famous Amazon corporation, Amazon Assistant managed to gain a not so positive name from many antivirus programs and malware specialists – and there are a few reasons for that.

Once installed, Amazon Assistant alters the main browser page, search service provider, displays too many ads and shopping suggestions, creates pop-ups and appearing windows, on top of all that, some accuse it of being spyware.

About Amazon Assistant in short:

Classification	Adware, potentially unwanted program.
Problems with Amazon Assistant	It changes browser behavior, it tracks user activity.
How is it installed?	Downloaded from the internet, included in the installers and updates of other programs.
How to remove Amazon Assistant	Uninstall Amazon Assistant and other potentially unwanted programs or remove them with Malwarebytes. check your computer for malware with Spyhunter for PC, Combo Cleaner for Mac, and other programs.

While the application itself was made to assist the shoppers to improve their shopping experience by informing about the best deals, compare the products, keep all favorites in one spot, the serious negative features weight the benefits down making it no more than just a PUP (potentially unwanted program).

PUPs are not the most malicious malware type nowadays, yet it should still be removed completely for the sake of your privacy and computer’s well being. 2-viruses.com team prepared a quick guide below on how to do that, so please, keep reading.

Why is Amazon Assistant considered a virus?

It makes unwanted changes to web browsers

To begin with, Amazon Assistant is really not a virus, but its suspicious activities like data tracking, browser hijacking, influenced shopping, frequent pop-ups, and persistence on one’s computer cause a negative reaction even from the most loyal Amazon users. Tech forums constantly getting filled up with requests to help remove Amazon Assistant also serve as clear proof that the Amazon Assistant shopping app is not all that great.
People are not satisfied with the Amazon Assistant shopping helper because, in some cases, they don’t even mean to install it. It snuck into their system without permission. Then, it generates ads and injects them into webpages, such as your web search results. This makes internet browsing a bit more frustrating, as you ave to deal with new obnoxious ads clogging up your screen.

It tracks user information

But the most serious drawback of Amazon Assistant is its really personal data collection and collaboration with some Third-parties.

For example, you provide information when you search for a product; place an order through Amazon.com or one of our third-party sellers; provide information in Your Account (and you might have more than one if you have used more than one e-mail address when shopping with us) or Your Profile ; communicate with us by phone, e-mail, or otherwise; complete a questionnaire or a contest entry form; use our services such as Amazon Instant Video; compile Wish Lists or other gift registries; participate in Discussion Boards or other community features; provide and rate Reviews; and employ Product Availability Alerts, such as Available to Order Notifications.
As a result of those actions, you might supply us with such information as your name, address, and phone numbers; credit card information; people to whom purchases have been shipped, including addresses and phone number; people (with addresses and phone numbers) listed in 1-Click settings; e-mail addresses of your friends and other people; content of reviews and e-mails to us; personal description and photograph in Your Profile ; and financial information, including Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

All companies track some information about their users to improve the service, ads and etc. but when it comes to gathering financial data and Social Security numbers, even the most trustworthy companies raise suspicion of committing cybercrime or exposing the personal records to malicious third parties. Make sure to read about the rest information Amazon collects about you on their Official website.

Apart from the data tracking, Amazon Assistant has some really annoying features as well, such as replacing your usual homepage and search engine and generating really irritating C:Program Files(x86)AmazonAmazon Assistantaa.hta pop-ups that appear every 30 seconds. Amazon Assistant will make sure to overwhelm you with various shopping deals, promotions, similar product comparisons which not necessarily are truthful. Moreover, some users noticed that the hijacked browser (especially IE/Edge) get under serious control Amazon Assistant forces to keep the Explorer open no matter the effort to close it manually and uses it to re-install the app again if you remove it.

How does Amazon Assistant get installed?

Downloaded from the internet

The tech giant is one of the most profitable and popular online retailers for a reason. The distribution methods of Amazon Assistant include its official website and browser app stores. For example, there’s the Amazon Assistant browser extension which happens to be able to read your activity on all the sites that you visit.

Included with other programs

No matter how many users and fans the company has, the shopping add-on is not a crucial or helpful feature that everyone would want/need to have, which is why some more ambiguous propagation comes in handy.

To gain a bigger crowd, Amazon Assistant extension installer distributes just like the adware and browser hijacker viruses – through bundling. Although Amazon has the certificate and finances to share their product on the main website, this still doesn’t give the wanted popularity, so with the help of other intrusive and widely common update installers, freeware and etc.

Most commonly, Amazon Assitant was noticed spreading as an Optional program in Java updates. The majority of us are used to reoccurring updates. Sometimes, without much thought, we quickly skip through the setup process just to finish the routine task and get back to what we were doing. But we might notice various new tools and products on our computer that we can’t recall installing.

That is exactly how Amazon Assitant gets in. The collaborating companies, bundle makers include mischievous Amazon feature to the optional/additional program section, which we don’t always notice, and if we do not uncheck it, all the software gets added by the default, without asking for additional permission.

The most – 42 percent of installs of Amazon Assistant come from the United States, which is understandable because of the huge popularity of the online shopping service.

You should always make sure to mindfully install free software and take your time carefully reviewing every page before clicking ‘Install’. You can additionally read more about the safe internet browsing tips written by Kaspersky.

How to get rid of Amazon Assistant completely

To save your time and keep your nerves, we advise you to get yourself a sophisticated anti-malware removal tool like Malwarebytes, etc. Although many antivirus programs do not detect Amazon Assistant as malware, specific anti-spyware software mentioned above recognizes it as a PUP and easily removes it from the directories that the regular user can’t always access.

The truth is that if the Amazon Assitant came packed together with other programs, there is a big possibility that there might be not just one threat in a bundle which you might not know about yet. That is why we recommend malware removal tools like Spyhunter for Windows, Combo Cleaner for macOS, and others to scan your whole system with.

Automatic Malware removal tools

Of course, as an official application, Amazon Assistant must have the uninstall option. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work as it supposed to. Many users claim that they can’t remove the Amazon Assitant from the Control Panel because the Uninstall button is not existent or turns grey and is inactive. After hearing so many similar responses Amazon came up with the detailed guide on how to remove its Assistant: Instructions.

Despite the nice gesture, the issue wasn’t solved completely, because the provided instructions did not cover the more stubborn infection situations, and that is why annoyed customers turned to online forums which offered two solutions, which seemed to help the most:

1. To disable the Amazon Assistant service processes before uninstalling it.
   1. On Windows, you can do that by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del > Task Manager > Processes and ending the service that is related to Amazon (has “Amazon” in its name). Then try to uninstall.
   2. On macOS, you can quit an app by pressing Alt+Cmd+Esc all at once, selecting the program that you want to quit, and then pressing the Force Quit button. You can also use Activity Monitor.
2. On Windows, instead of the blocked ‘Remove’ button pressing the ‘Change’ in the Control Panel and then picking the ‘Make program not available’ option in the further steps.

Remember also that the Amazon Assistant app might be present only in your browser. Browser extensions are very simple to remove, the instructions can be found below.

How can you remove Amazon Assistant yourself

How to remove Amazon Assistant virus using Windows Control Panel

Many hijackers and adware like Amazon Browser bar install some of their components as regular Windows programs as well as additional software. This part of malware can be uninstalled from the Control Panel. To access it, do the following.

• Start→Control Panel (older Windows) or press Windows Key→Search and enter Control Panel and then press Enter (Windows 8, Windows 10).
• Choose Uninstall Program (if you don't see it, click in the upper right next to "View by" and select Category).
• Go through the list of programs and select entries related to Amazon Web Search . You can click on "Name" or "Installed On" to reorder your programs and make Aa.hta easier to find.
• Click the Uninstall button. If you're asked if you really want to remove the program, click Yes.
• In many cases anti-malware programs are better at detecting related parasites, thus I recommend installing Spyhunter to identify other programs that might be a part of this infection.

How to remove Amazon Web Search from macOS

Delete Aa.hta from your applications.

1. Open Finder.
2. In the menu bar, click Go.
3. Select Applications from the dropdown.
4. Find the Amazon assistant.hta app.
5. Select it and right-click it (or hold the Ctrl and click the left mouse button).
6. In the dropdown, click Move to Bin/Trash. You might be asked to provide your login password.

TopHow To remove Amazon Assistant Virus from Google Chrome:

• Click on the 3 horizontal lines icon on a browser toolbar and Select More Tools→Extensions
  
• Select all malicious extensions and delete them.
  
• Click on the 3 horizontal lines icon on a browser toolbar and Select Settings
  
• Select Manage Search engines
  
• Remove unnecessary search engines from the list
  
• Go back to settings. On Startup choose Open blank page (you can remove undesired pages from the set pages link too).
• If your homepage was changed, click on Chrome menu on the top right corner, select Settings. Select Open a specific page or set of pages and click on Set pages.
  
• Delete malicious search websites at a new Startup pages window by clicking “X” next to them.
  

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings

If you are still experiencing any issues related to Amazon Browser bar, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Click on a Chrome’s menu button (three horizontal lines) and select Settings.
• Scroll to the end of the page and click on theReset browser settings button.
  
• Click on the Reset button on the confirmation box.
  

If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.

How To remove Amazon Assistant Virus from Firefox:Top

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Mozilla window and select the “Add-ons” icon (Or press Ctrl+Shift+A on your keyboard).
  
• Go through Extensions and Addons list, remove everything Amazon Assistant Virus related and items you do not recognise. If you do not know the extension and it is not made by Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, Oracle or Adobe then you probably do not need it.
  
• If your homepage was changed, click on the Firefox menu in the top right corner, select Options → General. Enter a preferable URL to the homepage field and click Restore to Default.
  

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings If you are still experiencing any issues related to Amazon assistant.hta, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Mozilla Firefox window. Click on the Help button.
  
• ChooseTroubleshooting Information on the Help menu.
  
• Click on theReset Firefox button.
  
• Click on the Reset Firefox button on the confirmation box. Mozilla Firefox will close and change the settings to default.
  

If the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program to identify malicious entries.

How to remove Amazon Assistant Virus from Microsoft Edge:Top

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Microsoft Edge window. Select “Extensions”.

• Select all malicious extensions and delete them.

• Click on the three-dot menu on the browser toolbar and Select Settings

• Select Privacy and Services and scroll down. Press on Address bar.

• Choose Manage search engines.

• Remove unnecessary search engines from the list: open the three-dot menu and choose Remove.

• Go back to Settings. Open On start-up.
• Delete malicious search websites at Open specific page or pages by opening the three-dot menu and clicking Delete.

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings If you are still experiencing any issues related to Amazon Browser bar, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings

• Click on Edge's menu button and select Settings. Click on the Reset Settings button on the left.
• Press the Restore settings to their default values option.

• Click on the Reset button on the confirmation box.

If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.

How to remove Amazon Assistant Virus from Safari:Top

Remove malicious extensions

• Click on Safari menu on the top left corner of the screen. Select Preferences.
  
• Select Extensions and uninstall Amazon assistant.hta and other suspicious extensions.
  
• If your homepage was changed, click on Safari menu on the top left corner of the screen. Select Preferences and choose General tab. Enter preferable URL to the homepage field.
  

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings(older versions) If you are still experiencing any issues related to Amazon Assistant Virus, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Click on Safari menu on the top left corner of the screen. Select Reset Safari…
  
• Select which options you want to reset (usually all of them come preselected) and click on the Reset button.
  

If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.