Of course, online advertising is nothing new – since the dawn of the Internet and websites, advertising has found another new home. From sites trying to get you to purchase their own goods or services to seemingly randomly placed adverts that appear on your screen, nowhere is safe from advertising.
But have you noticed recently that the adverts you see are very often for products that you are actually interested in? Or for services that you have recently been Googling or searching for on Bing? Let's imagine you've recently been looking online for a new winter coat – now all of a sudden you are seeing adverts that say 'Brought to you by SourceApp' for the websites you have visited that are showing the same or similar products. It doesn't matter what you're looking for – the online adverts displayed on your screen are scarily close to recent searches you have made. So what causes this and how do advertisers or companies know what you've been looking at?
Welcome to the wonderful – and slightly creepy – world of adware, in this case SourceApp. Adware, or advertising supported software, is a program that downloads or displays adverts on your PC, tablet or smartphone. And how does adware know exactly which ads to show you? That's due to the component it installs on your device which monitors which websites and web pages you are visiting. This way the adware developer can customize which adverts to show you – thereby increasing the chances of you clicking on them, visiting their destination site and spending some money. We told you it was a bit creepy!
The reasons for the existence of adware, therefore, are pretty clear: to generate money. But who for? Of course for the company who is advertising, but also for software developers who create free programs or make downloads free and available to anyone who uses the Internet. The adware, for them, is a means of generating a revenue stream – money they are not earning by giving away their software or program for nothing.
So far so innocent. Or so it seems. The problem is with SourceApp adware – aside from the fact that someone is logging your browsing data and monitoring your Internet usage - is that the component that adware installs on your PC can cause it to run far slower thanks to the behind the scenes work it is doing. It'll also slow your Internet connection down – because it's constantly using it to relay data, and it can often cause your PC to crash too.
Bottom line: get yourself the best antivirus software you can find and make sure it's always up to date.
To stop SourceApp ads popping up on your computer, please follow the steps in the removal guide below. If you have any questions, please leave a comment down below. Good luck and be safe online!
Written by Michael Kaur, http://delmalware.blogspot.com
SourceApp Ads Removal Guide:
1. First of all, download anti-malware software and run a full system scan. It will detect and remove this infection from your computer. You may then follow the manual removal instructions below to remove the leftover traces of this malware. Hopefully you won't have to do that.
2. Remove SourceApp related programs from your computer using the Add/Remove Programs control panel (Windows XP) or Uninstall a program control panel (Windows 7 and Windows 8).
Go to the Start Menu. Select Control Panel → Add/Remove Programs.
If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, select Control Panel → Uninstall a Program.
If you are using Windows 8, simply drag your mouse pointer to the right edge of the screen, select Search from the list and search for "control panel".
Or you can right-click on a bottom left hot corner (formerly known as the Start button) and select Control panel from there.
3. When the Add/Remove Programs or the Uninstall a Program screen is displayed, scroll through the list of currently installed programs and remove the following:
- SourceApp
- Coupons
- and any other recently installed application
Simply select each application and click Remove. If you are using Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8, click Uninstall up near the top of that window. When you're done, please close the Control Panel screen.
Remove SourceApp related extensions from Google Chrome:
1. Click on Chrome menu button. Go to Tools → Extensions.
2. Click on the trashcan icon to remove SourceApp, MediaPlayerV1, HD-Plus 3.5 and other extensions that you do not recognize.
If the removal option is grayed out then read how to remove extensions installed by enterprise policy.
Remove SourceApp related extensions from Mozilla Firefox:
1. Open Mozilla Firefox. Go to Tools → Add-ons.
2. Select Extensions. Click Remove button to remove SourceApp, MediaPlayerV1, HD-Plus 3.5 and other extensions that you do not recognize.
Remove SourceApp related add-ons from Internet Explorer:
1. Open Internet Explorer. Go to Tools → Manage Add-ons. If you have the latest version, simply click on the Settings button.
2. Select Toolbars and Extensions. Click Remove/Disable button to remove the browser add-ons listed above.