Home Malware Programs Adware WinterWaldo

WinterWaldo

Posted: December 15, 2016

Threat Metric

Threat Level: 2/10
Infected PCs: 70
First Seen: December 14, 2016
Last Seen: March 5, 2023
OS(es) Affected: Windows

WinterWaldo is a low-quality browser extension that has been classified as adware by malware researchers. The extension promises to provide users with instant access to a variety of Christmas-themed online games that are 100% free-to-play. While this may seem like a great offer, you should keep in mind that there are tons of reputable websites that host games of this type and they don't demand that you install a browser extension to access their content. However, this isn't the reason why WinterWaldo is being removed by many popular anti-malware software suites. The reason for this are the advertisements that this browser extension may start displaying on active Web browser windows, as soon as it is installed. The license agreement published on WinterWaldo's mentions that this software is ad-supported, and users who install it agree to view the 3rd-party advertising content that WinterWaldo will inject into their Web browser automatically.

Apart from displaying ads, WinterWaldo may also work as a low-level browser hijacker by changing the Web browser's new tab page to a custom search aggregator associated with WinterWaldo. The page in question includes a search field, as well as quick links to some of WinterWaldo's most popular games and other game-related content. The good news is that neither of the actions that WinterWaldo performs is classified as threatening, but they might be mildly inconvenient, especially if the user was not aware of WinterWaldo's behavior before agreeing to install it.

Direct download and installation is not the only way you can get WinterWaldo on your computer. This extension also might rely on alternative distribution methods such as software bundling, and this is why we'd like to remind our readers to review the terms & agreements carefully, as well as the installation instructions that accompany free software they download from the Web. If you don't want the WinterWaldo extension to bother you anymore, then there are two ways to deal with it – either remove it from the list of active browser extensions or let a reputable anti-malware scanner to take care of the problem.

Technical Details

Additional Information

The following URL's were detected:
search.winterwaldo.com

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