Startnow.com

Startnow.com is a malicious website as well as a browser hijacker that redirects you to the Startnow.com website. The Startnow.com hijacker masquerades in the form of a helpful browser plugin, and must be installed with your permission; however, this plugin will redirect you from unrelated websites to Startnow.com. Like most websites that are related to malicious software, Startnow.com has a poor reputation with organizations that rate online safety; you should avoid Startnow.com and delete Startnow.com plugins by using appropriate anti-virus or security software to scan your computer.

The Simplicity of the Startnow.com Scam

Startnow.com pretends to be a helpful portal for popular search engines like Bing, but Startnow.com searches are powered by affiliate funding and can direct you to malicious websites. The Startnow.com plugin, which is known as Startnow.Hyperbar or Adware.Hyperbar, has been seen for years, but recent updates in 2011 make the Startnow.com hijacker a modern threat to your PC.

Like Startnow.com itself, Startnow.Hyperbar will pretend to be a benevolent search engine optimization tool. Current versions of Startnow.Hyperbar can only be installed with your permission and make every attempt to look like an official and safe plugin.

Unfortunately, Startnow.Hyperbar and the Startnow.com website aren't as helpful as they seem; any attempt to use links on a web browser infected by the Startnow.com plugin can result in being redirected to Startnow.com. As a side effect of the hijack technique, you may also see 'nav.stratnow.com' in the web address bar directly after you've clicked an unrelated link.

Startnow.com's constant attempts to force you to use Startnow.com's questionable services are purely for the sake of exposing you to websites that pay affiliate program money back to Startnow.com. Startnow.com is more likely than a standard search engine to expose you to hostile websites or alter your search results in negative ways.

How to Stop Now with Startnow.com

Because of Startnow.com's poor reputation and the hijacking techniques used by Startnow.Hyperbar' plugin, deleting Startnow.com plugins and other related software is strongly recommended. Trying to remove Startnow.com software from your PC manually can allow components to remain behind; leftover browser hijacker components can record browser-related information or cause other problems that interfere with your ability to browse websites.

The ideal way to remove Startnow.com components from your computer is to reboot into Safe Mode, which can be done by restarting your PC and tapping F8 until the relevant boot menu appears. After this, a full system scan with any quality and updated security program should detect and delete Startnow.com software. Avoid opening your web browser for any reason during this process, since this may activate the Startnow.com plugin and turn the deletion into an incomplete operation.