Home Malware Programs Adware Charm Savings

Charm Savings

Posted: December 23, 2013

Threat Metric

Ranking: 7,898
Threat Level: 2/10
Infected PCs: 11,849
First Seen: December 23, 2013
Last Seen: October 16, 2023
OS(es) Affected: Windows

Charm Savings is a Potentially Unwanted Program based on the adware sub-variety of PUPs, with functions that are intended to load third party advertisements regularly. Although Charm Savings implies that these advertisement-based browser changes are to the benefit of your online shopping experiences, malware researchers tend to recommend removing Charm Savings and other adware – as they are overall detrimental to your browser's performance. Besides performance and optimization problems, Charm Savings's advertisements (for which Charm Savings claims to have no legal liability) may be a source of contact with attacks against your PC by genuine threats, which makes minimizing your exposure to Charm Savings advertisements a reasonably good idea.

Why Charm Savings's School of Charm Wears Off Quickly

Like relatively new adware programs such as Shopping Suggestions, or old ones like the DealCabby Virus, Charm Savings is an adware product that pretends to be on your side, by offering you shopping-related advantages. By implementing a pull-down tab for online coupons, Charm Savings delivers advertisements that may be related to your online browsing experiences, which is easy for Charm Savings, considering that Charm Savings tracks your basic behavior with cookies. Through the research of malware experts, this kind of targeting advertising, while potentially alarming to those concerned about their privacy, has been confirmed not to steal private information, such as passwords or account names.

While Charm Savings doesn't deliberately harm you or your computer through its use of coupon-based advertisements, its advertisements may inadvertently be sources of various online threats. PC threats that malware researchers often notice being distributed through adware-promoted advertisement networks include drive-by-downloads, exploit kits, fake software patches, inaccurate system alerts and phishing attacks, many of which overlap with each other. The aim of these attacks usually is to steal personal information with your consent (by using social engineering methods) or infect your computer, with the ultimate result of stealing information.

Learning to Ignore Not-So-Charming Shopping Advice

Charm Savings is not classified as a threat, but like almost all other PUPs, Charm Savings provides very few legitimate benefits in exchange for representing a non-negligible security and performance hazard. Deleting Charm Savings and all similar adware always is encouraged, if not necessarily mandated strictly, by malware researchers, which often sees these programs distribute very real PC threats accidentally. If you do decide to keep Charm Savings on your computer, you should exercise the highest caution against any bargains or offers that appear to resemble common PC threats as noted in the previous paragraph.

Because removing Charm Savings in a less than complete manner may be a source of continuing browser issues, using appropriate security software to remove Charm Savings is better than attempting it on your own. Unless actual threats or other PUPs interfere, a normal anti-malware scan for potential threats should be more than adequate at getting your browser returned to its old, advertising-free self.

Technical Details

Registry Modifications

The following newly produced Registry Values are:

File name without pathhttp_charmsavings.com_0.localstoragehttp_charmsavings.com_0.localstorage-journalHKEY..\..\..\..{RegistryKeys}SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Charm SavingsSOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Charm Savings

Additional Information

The following directories were created:
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Charm Savings%LOCALAPPDATA%\Charm Savings%PROGRAMFILES%\Charm Savings%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Charm Savings%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Charm Savings
The following URL's were detected:
charmsavings.com
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