UC Browser is a web browser that promotes itself as a useful alternative to any other browser available both for Android and PC. It’s advertised advantage is the “enhanced mode” that allegedly saves mobile data by effectively compressing it.
Belonging to Alibaba, UC Browser is one of the most popular browsers for Android, specially in China and India, although is has gained some popularity also in western countries. According to information provided by Edward Snowden, and as reported by CBC News Canada and The Intercepter, several organizations infitrated UC Browser in 2011, inserting in some cases programs whose goal was to spy and steal data from affected mobile phones.
Citizen Lab, a research group for Toronto’s University, analyzed both the Chinese and English UC Browser versions for the CBC News report and found several important security and privacy issues; such issues included measures that allowed the spies to save: all searches performed by affected users, data saved in the SIM card and hardware identification numbers that could be used to track users. Citizen Lab warned UC Browser about this issues last April, therefore current versions are supposed to be fixed by now.
Search keywords are sent to Yahoo India and Google without any encryption; IMEI number, Android ID and Mac addresses are also sent non-encrypted to Umeng (an Alibaba analysis tool). Finally geographical information such as longitude/latitude is also sent unprotected to AMAP (an Alibaba mapping tool).
You should know that UCBrowser is detected as a malware only by ESET-NOD32.
How to remove UC Browser ?
Remove UC Browser with MalwareBytes Anti-Malware
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware detects and removes malware like worms, Trojans, rootkits, rogues, spyware, and more. All you have to do is launch Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free and run a scan. If you want even better protection, consider Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium and its instant real-time scanner that automatically prevents malware and websites from infecting your PC.
- Download MalwareBytes Anti-Malware :
Premium Version Free Version (without Real-time protection) - Install MalwareBytes Anti-Malware using the installation wizard.
- Once installed, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware will automatically start and you will see a message stating that you should update the program, and that a scan has never been run on your system. To start a system scan you can click on the Fix Now button.
- Malwarebytes Anti-Malware will now check for updates, and if there are any, you will need to click on the Update Now button.
- Once the program has loaded, select Scan now.
- When the scan is done, you will now be presented with a screen showing you the malware infections that Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware has detected. To remove the malicious programs that Malwarebytes Anti-malware has found, click on the Quarantine All button, and then click on the Apply Now button.
- When removing the files, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware may require a reboot in order to remove some of them. If it displays a message stating that it needs to reboot your computer, please allow it to do so.
Remove UC Browser with AdwCleaner
AdwCleaner is a helpful tool developed to eliminate unwelcome toolbars, browser hijackers, redirects and potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Opera. AdwCleaner will require no installation and can be ran in a instantaneous to scan your system.
- Please download AdwCleaner by Xplode and save to your Desktop :
Download AdwCleaner - Double-click on AdwCleaner.exe to run the tool (Windows Vista/7/8 users : right-click and select Run As Administrator).
- Click on the Scan button.
- After the scan has finished, click on the Clean button..
- Press OK again to allow AdwCleaner to restart the computer and complete the removal process.
Remove UC Browser with ZHPCleaner
ZHPCleaner is a program that searches for and deletes Adware, Toolbars, Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUP), and browser Hijackers from your computer. By using ZHPCleaner you can easily remove many of these types of programs for a better user experience on your computer and while browsing the web.
- If Avast is installed on you computer you have to disable it during the process.
- You can download AdwCleaner utility from the below button :
Download ZHPCleaner - Select ZHPCleaner.exe with right mouse click and Run as Administrator.
- Accept the user agreement.
- Click on the Scanner button.
- After the scan has finished, click on the Repair button.
- Reboot your computer.
Remove UC Browser with HitmanPro
HitmanPro is an anti-virus program that describes itself as a second opinion scanner that should be used in conjunction with another anti-virus program that you may already have installed.
- You can download HitmanPro from the below link:
Download HitmanPro - Double-click on the file named HitmanPro.exe (for 32-bit versions of Windows) or HitmanPro_x64.exe (for 64-bit versions of Windows).
- Click on the Next button, to install HitmanPro on your computer.
- HitmanPro will now begin to scan your computer for UC Browser malicious files.
- When it has finished it will display a list of all the malware that the program found as shown in the image below. Click on the Next button, to remove UC Browser virus.
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