WHAT IS EMAIL BOMBARDMENT?

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An email bombing is an attack on your inbox that involves sending massive amounts of messages to it. Sometimes these messages are incomprehensible. But more often, they will be confirmation emails for newsletters and subscriptions. Thus, in the latter case, the attacker uses a script to search for forums and newsletters on the internet. Then they sign up for an account with your email address. Each will send you a confirmation email, asking you to confirm your address. Also, this process is repeated on as many unprotected sites as the script can find. The term Email Bombing or Email Bombing; it can also refer to flooding an email server with too many emails. In an attempt to overwhelm the server and disable it. But that's not the goal here; it would be a challenge to cut down on the modern email accounts used. Meanwhile, Google or Microsoft email servers, anyway. So instead of a denial of service (DOS) attack; against the email servers you are using. Also, the flood of messages...
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REMOVE VIRUS FROM WEB BROWSER

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It is possible that if you have come this far you are having problems with your browser, and it is redirecting you to pages that you do not want. This happens when malicious code like launchpage.org takes over your browser. At that point it will start displaying sponsored search results to redirect its victims to these pages. And furthermore, you will see that your default search engine has changed and is now one called launchpage.

launchpage virus

If you are seeing that URL in any of your web browsers, then you are infected. If so, in this guide we show you everything you need to know about this malware and also the steps you should follow in order not to get infected again and to get rid of it in Windows. Not only to eliminate this annoyance, but because in the future it could generate other security problems, some of them serious.

WHAT IS LAUNCHPAGE.ORG AND HOW DOES IT INFECT YOU?

Well, the developers of this code present it as a reliable search engine to improve the browsing experience by showing optimized results. That is, at first glance it could be an alternative to Bing, Google, Yahoo, etc. But there is something else behind it, and that is that launchpage.org collects a lot of user data. Yes, you may be thinking that this is also done by Bing, Google and Yahoo, among others, and you are right.

But at least, on those legitimate search engines, searches don't redirect you to where they "want" to be as direct as this search engine does. Also, legitimate search engines can be displayed in your browser if you want. And they can be easily configured to remove them, but these types of search engines are usually very persistent.

On the other hand, there is the method in which they reach you, and that is that they are installed together with other free programs. When you download free programs from websites that are not the official websites of the developer of said program, you already know that they usually come with modified installers that include several programs in the pack. If you use the default or standard installation, they will end up installing the program you wanted along with other potentially unwanted programs like launchpage.org.

WHO IS AFFECTED?

It affects all browsers for Windows and MacOS, such as Internet Explorer, Edge, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc. If they are affected, it will show you lanuchpage.org as the home page so that the searches you do are made through it and not your preferred search engine. So they can get more information from you, that is, from the victim.

Dangerousness

Although it may not seem very critical, the truth is that it has several functionalities that can end with much more serious security problems:

The redirects or the content that this search engine shows, can sometimes be even dangerous. And take you to places where you can end up with more than one infection.

It can also display misleading pop-up ads, which can lead to scams. Among these ads are fake Flash Player installers that if they are followed you will end up with software that could also be dangerous installed on your computer.

On the other hand, it monitors the activity of your browser, an important privacy problem that can filter some of your personal data, ID, IP, etc.

REMOVE LAUNCHPAGE.ORG

You can eliminate this malware by following these simple steps that I show you here. But first, you should know that you can eliminate these types of threats in many ways automatically. One of them is using specific programs to eliminate threats from your web browser and you will not have to follow these steps of the manual method that I show you here.

The first thing is to uninstall the program from your Windows or macOS operating system. To do this, you can follow these steps:

Windows: Go to Control Panel, to the Programs section and then click on Uninstall a program. In the list, look for the suspicious entry. In this case, one with a launchpage name. Once selected, click on uninstall.

MACOS: If you are on an Apple computer, go to the Applications menu, then look in the list of apps for the name of the program you want to uninstall, right-click on it and click on Move to Trash.

Delete launchpage.org from your web browser

Once the focus of the problem is uninstalled, you will have to clean your web browser from this search engine, since it has left traces and will continue to bother you if you don't. As with the operating system, depending on the affected web browser, the steps will vary slightly. Here is how to do it in the most popular web browsers (in the rest it will be similar):

Internet Explorer: Go to the tools icon (the gear icon of your browser), then Manage Add-ons, and there delete everything you see suspicious such as entries with launchpage, Babylon, etc., depending on the problem that is affecting you. Then, in the tools icon, go to Options and in the General tab, remove the suspicious URL from the Home Page field. Quit IE and log back in to verify that it worked. If you see that it has not worked, try to click with the right button of the mouse on the IE icon, then go to Properties, and in the path where it says "C: \… Internet Explorer.exe", you will see that after this path there is a URL from http://launchpage.org that you must remove, that is, everything after the last quotes. Accept and go.

Microsoft Edge: Go to your browser, then in More (three points in the upper right corner), Settings, and then click on the button to choose what you want to remove from the navigation data cleaning section. Delete everything. Then go to the Task Manager with Ctrl + Alt + Del, and find the Microsoft Edge process in the list, right-click on it and choose View more details. It will take you to another window, choose the processes that refer to Microsoft Edge and with the right button click Finish Task. And ready.

Mozilla Firefox: Go to the menu (three lines), then to Add-ons, on the left click on Extensions. And now it will appear from the list of extensions that you have installed. Select the suspect in your case (Babylon, launchpage, etc.) and delete it. Then go back to the menu, go to Preferences, Home, and change the URL of your home page and put your favorite search engine, for example https://google.es. Save the changes and that's it. You can restart the browser or exit and re-enter.

Google Chrome: Go to the menu (three lines), then to Tools, Extensions, and look for the suspicious search engine (launchpage, Babylon, etc.) to eliminate it. Once eliminated by clicking on the trash icon, you can return to the main menu, then to Settings, and there change the home page to that of your favorite search engine, eliminating the problematic page from there as well. Accept the changes and voila, you can restart or exit and re-enter the browser to see the results.

Safari: Click on Safari, then Preferences, select Extensions, and uninstall suspicious ones such as launchpage, Babylon, etc., depending on the browser that torments you. Go back to the Safari menu, Preferences, General, and in the Home Page area you can change the URL to that of your preferred and legitimate search engine. Then accept, restart or close

And re-enter your browser.

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