WinterWaldo
Posted: December 15, 2016
Threat Metric
The following fields listed on the Threat Meter containing a specific value, are explained in detail below:
Threat Level: The threat level scale goes from 1 to 10 where 10 is the highest level of severity and 1 is the lowest level of severity. Each specific level is relative to the threat's consistent assessed behaviors collected from SpyHunter's risk assessment model.
Detection Count: The collective number of confirmed and suspected cases of a particular malware threat. The detection count is calculated from infected PCs retrieved from diagnostic and scan log reports generated by SpyHunter.
Volume Count: Similar to the detection count, the Volume Count is specifically based on the number of confirmed and suspected threats infecting systems on a daily basis. High volume counts usually represent a popular threat but may or may not have infected a large number of systems. High detection count threats could lay dormant and have a low volume count. Criteria for Volume Count is relative to a daily detection count.
Trend Path: The Trend Path, utilizing an up arrow, down arrow or equal symbol, represents the level of recent movement of a particular threat. Up arrows represent an increase, down arrows represent a decline and the equal symbol represent no change to a threat's recent movement.
% Impact (Last 7 Days): This demonstrates a 7-day period change in the frequency of a malware threat infecting PCs. The percentage impact correlates directly to the current Trend Path to determine a rise or decline in the percentage.
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.
Leave a Reply
Please note that we are not able to assist with billing and support issues regarding SpyHunter or other products. If you're having issues with SpyHunter, please get in touch with SpyHunter customer support through your SpyHunter . If you have SpyHunter billing questions, we recommend you check the Billing FAQ. For general suggestions or feedback, contact us.