The Surf Shield - How to remove

The Surf Shield is described as powerful and useful application, but actually it is not as useful as described. By the description, it should protect your privacy by protecting your data from other parties when surfing the Internet. Here’s their official description:

Whenever you surf the web you create dozens of records. Every picture you download, video you watch, and website you visit are stored – and can easily be discovered. Even if you erase your browser history, there are dozens of files that you cannot delete.

The Surf Shield protects your privacy by letting you control when your computer saves these records and when it does not. If you use the internet at work, use a shared computer, view financial information, or just don’t want others to see where you’ve been, you need The Surf Shield.

Vice versa, this application will not help you to enhance your web browsing and protect your self, but will bring up some problems to your everyday life. It is listed as an adware and a PUP (potentially unwanted program) due to several malicious actions that it performs. It works as a browser add-on that can be added to all most popular web browsers, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. It is available only on Windows operating system, so users with Macs should not worry about it. Once inside, it will display various advertisements right on your web browser. Those ads can be displayed in various forms, such pop-up, pop-under, in-text or banner advertisements. A new window or tab can even be opened randomly. Those ads usually display various deals, coupons and other commercial offers to purchase some particular goods at an appealing price rate. Even though those ads look really attractive, you should not believe that, because most of the time they are fake. It’s just a trick to win your attention and make yu click on one of those ads. And you should not do that, because if you do so, you will be immediately redirected to third parties website that may be infected and cause some problems to your computer, or you can even get scammed if you attempt to purchase something on one of those websites. The Surf Shield is closely affiliated with various third parties and are paid for displaying their advertises. The problem is that they do not moderate or in any other way administrate their sponsors, thus various cyber criminals, such as hackers and scammers can use this advertising network and reach you right on your web browser on a daily basis.

Another unwanted attribute of The Surf Shield is data collection. If you have a spare minute, pay a visit to their official website at http://www.thesurfshield.com/ and take a look to their Privacy Policy:

We store and use the information you give us in accordance with the terms of this Policy. Our registration form (or registration information you provide our marketing partners if you joined The Surf Shield though one of our partners) requests that you provide certain contact and profile information. That information includes but may not be limited to: name, address, email address, phone number, gender and birth date.

In addition, we might receive information about you from outside sources and add it to your The Surf Shield membership information. We do this to improve personalization of our services (for example, providing better newsletter content, advertising or special offers that we think will interest you).

We also may collect information such as the identification of the server your computer is logged onto and whether you opened a The Surf Shield e-mail delivered to you. We also may compare our customer list to lists received from other companies, in an effort to avoid sending identical messages to our members. You can add and modify the information you have provided by sending an e-mail to [email protected] with your requested changes.

When you submit personal information, it is kept in a secure database to ensure that is not subject to any unauthorized data usage.

We use all this information in five ways:

• to provide you with personalized information via electronic delivery, telemarketing and/or direct mail. These may include personalized offers from 3rd party sources.
• to send you targeted advertising via electronic delivery and/or direct mail;
• to contact you for feedback and surveys via electronic delivery and/or direct mail;
• to send you general and administrative information about The Surf Shield via electronic delivery and/or direct mail; and
• to provide your contact information to The Surf Shield marketing partners whose offer(s) you have selected to receive in order for them to send you special offers via electronic delivery, telemarketing and direct mail.

Use of Personal Information

We may share non-personal, summary information regarding its customers with partners or other third parties. However, any individual customer’s information provided for partners or third parties under contract with Grab Media Holdings, LLC, shall be used only to perform or complete a necessary transaction or function related to the customer’s purchase. These transactions or functions shall be in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy Statement. In some cases, Grab Media Holdings, LLC, may use a visitor’s personal information to understand overall patterns for web site usage, to contact the user for clarification on inaccurate information, or to follow up on a customer service issue.

Basically, this means that your personal data, such as browsing history, search queries, top visited websites, your IP and email addresses or even your geographic location will be collected and shared with those third parties. They adjust their ads according to the given data and make them look more relevant to your web browsing habits and interests this way. So the opportuinty that you will click on one of those ads – rise. And it’s the main goal of The Surf Shield, because they get paid for every click you make. They generate web traffic and collect sales leads. Moreover, some of your personal information (like your email address) can be sold to third parties for maketing purposes. That means you will be flooded with spam. Even though it’s not a dangerous virus that can cause a lot of damage itself, it can lead you to some unwanted consequences, therefore it needs to be removed as soon as possible.

There are two most common ways to get rid of The Surf Shield – manual and automatic. We recommend to do this automatically, because it is more reliable and efficient way. Download a trustworthy anti-malware, such as Spyhunter, Malwarebytes or StopZilla and scan your PC with it. It will detect and remove the adware automatically.  It will also protect your system from similar infections in the future. If for  some reasons you don’t want to download any anti-malware software, you can do this manually as well. Simply follow our step-by-step The Surf Shield removal guide given below.

Manual removal of The Surf Shield ads

How to remove The Surf Shield using Windows Control Panel

Many hijackers and adware like Surf Shield 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 The Surf Shield . You can click on "Name" or "Installed On" to reorder your programs and make Surf Shield  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.

TopRemove shortcut hijack (all browsers) (optional): If your browser opens Surf Shield page on startup only, try this:

• Right click on your browser icon. Choose Properties;
  
• Open Short cut tab;
  
• Delete Surf Shield part from target field.

TopHow To remove The Surf Shield 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 The Surf Shield , 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 The Surf Shield 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 The Surf Shield 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 Surf Shield , 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.

TopHow to remove The Surf Shield virus from Internet Explorer:

How to remove The Surf Shield virus from Internet Explorer (older versions):

• Click on the arrow on the right of the search box.
• Do the following: on IE8-9 choose Manage Search providers, on IE7 click Change search defaults.
• Remove the Surf Shield from the list.

How to remove The Surf Shield from IE 11:

• Click on the Settings icon (top right) → Manage Addons.
  
• Go through Toolbars and extensions. Remove everything related to The Surf Shield and items you do not know that are made not by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle or Adobe.
  
• Select Search Providers.
  
• If any of these search providers is not available, follow “Find more search providers” in the bottom of the screen and install Google.
  
• Close the Options.
• If your homepage was changed, click on the Gear icon on the top right corner to open the Internet Explorer menu, select Internet options and choose General tab. Enter a preferable URL to the homepage field and click Apply.
  

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings

If you are still experiencing any issues related to Surf Shield , reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Gear icon→Internet Options.
  
• Choose the Advanced tab and click on the Reset
• Select “Delete personal settings” checkbox and click on the Reset button.
  
• Click on the Close button on the confirmation box, then close your browser.
  

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

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