Saturday, March 26, 2011

JZip Highjacked my Homepage!

Don't use JZip for anything. It loads you up with spyware and adds toobars you never asked for, and highjacks your homepage. I recently needed to un-rar a device driver so I did a quick search and found JZip. JZip had the ability to un-rar files compressed with rar so I downloaded, installed, and ran it. It did decompress my file but it also did a lot of sneaky things that took me a while to catch. It had changed my homepage on Firefox to search.jzip.com or something like that and wouldn't let me change it. I ran Superantispyware in safe mode and got rid of a bunch of junk that JZip had installed but it didn't fix the problem with my homepage.  I was able to uninstall the bogus toolbar it had installed by going to Control Panel in Windows and simply uninstalling it but my homepage in Firefox and Internet Explorer where still both highjacked.

After doing a bit of research I found a free application called Highjack this by trend Micro to find out what was going on. Now a word of caution, when using Highjack this only remove files you know shouldn't be there. This program can help you find and correct a Highjacked homepage but you need to know what you are looking for.  What I found was a line for a Google toolbar that wasn't authentic, and another line for a toolbar that I never installed. I never install toolbars so I checked the box next to the line on both of them and my homepage issue was fixed. I was able to change my homepage back to what I wanted it to be. I needed to restart my computer to see the results because the highjacking was done at startup. I then ran Malwarebytes in safe mode to make sure my computer was clean and called it good.

If you are looking to simply unzip a .zip file you can use windows to do it for you, you simply select the icon with a zipper on it and then select extract all files. The files will be extracted to a folder created in the same directory as the zip file.

If you need a full featured Zip utility that will extract different types of compressed files like rar, lzh, etc. then use 7-Zip to take care of it for you.

What really amazes me is all of the advertisements for JZip that pop up when you search for a zip utility. The people who wrote this piece of trash should be put in handcuffs and hauled in for an atomic wedgie.

Dan

7 comments:

  1. Thanks!

    I managed not to get totally hijacked, it still lets me choose my homepage etc. in FF but how the heck do I just get the jzip toolbar to be GONE? I've uninstalled the program but that stupid toolbar is still there.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Using Highjack this I removed anything line that had toolbar in it. I never install those things. I had one that said Google (that I'm sure was a fake) and another one that said toolbar in the line.
    I hope that helps!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I downloaded jzip on 29 sept from filehippo, which i thought was trustworthy. I have encountered all of the problems described above, so their creepy activities are still going on.

    Uninstalling jzip and reboooting has not removed any of the problems in either firefox or chrome. Am about to try highjack, but am wary about making things worse. I am going to uninstall and reinstall firefox first

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the heads up - luckily I searched for comments before trying this program. Would like to mention that I passed on 7-Zip because after downloading it, it would not let me install it without forcing me to install a bunch of other junk I didn't want. Could find no way around this - if you have a work around I would love to hear it. Thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't understand why jzip is allowed to be out there to this day, it's hideous. I haven't tried installing 7-Zip in some time. I would think it would allow you to opt out of installing all of that extra crap.
      Most versions of Windows give you the ability to unzip a file using the file system built into Windows. You select the file then look to the top and one of the options is to unzip the package into a folder right there. Give it a try it's actually the easiest way to unzip a file with Windows.

      Delete
  5. If you select custom install, you can uncheck all these options, and it won't install any of the toolbars or hi-jack your homepage. Read everything you said you did before clicking the accept and agree button would be my advice.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My advise is to not even mess with this booby trap piece of crap software and go use 7-Zip.

      Delete