How To Remove WeKnow.ac From Mac Virus/Malware [Solved}

Daniel Sadakov

6 years ago

Can’t Remove WeKnow.ac Virus? This page includes detailed instructions on how to remove WeKnow.ac Virus for windows and also Mac found in the bottom half of the article.

If you are frequently experiencing some automatic page-redirects the very moment you open your browser and some random pop-ups, intrusive ads and hard-to-remove banners have started to appear all over your screen, then you most probably have gotten yourself a browser hijacker some consider to be like malware that’s currently tinkering with your mac. The browser hijackers are not dangerous computer viruses and they do not have the malicious abilities of Ransomware or Trojan horse infections.

However, they could be very annoying and could really be a major pain in the back if left unchecked. Usually, these pieces of software attach themselves to the default browser on the mac and pc (be it Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or some other one) and set some changes to the homepage or to the search engine settings. You may also notice that some new toolbar or an add-on might have gotten installed there without your approval and might have started to fill your screen with various promotional messages, pay-per-click ads, sponsored links and new tabs that aggressively force you to click on them.

These changes might not be very pleasant and might seriously alter the way your browser operates and the search results that it generates. That’s why, we completely understand if you want to remove the pesky app and its ads. However, you should know that this may not be that easy. The hijackers usually cannot be uninstalled in the normal way and, therefore, you may need to follow some different steps so as to locate and delete them from your system. In fact, on this page, you can find a detailed Removal Guide and a professional removal tool, both of which are methods you can use to deal with such malware.

The guide below mainly focuses on the so-called WeKnow.ac Virus app which is one recently reported and highly intrusive hijacker piece of software. This is a new application, which looks like a browser add-on but operates very similarly to the way we described above. In fact, a number of users have recently reported some issues with the way the application behaves and have complained about the way it affects their web browsing. That’s why we decided to provide our readers with helpful instructions on how to deal with it. You can find them right below.

What issues may a WeKnow.ac Virus cause while operating on your mac and pc?

The browser hijackers normally promote themselves as free tools which are supposed to enhance the users’ web experience or to provide them with some free functionality. However, usually, there is little to nothing useful which could be gained from keeping such software on your mac and pc. For instance, an application like WeKnow.ac Virus might promise to improve the settings of your browser or display relevant search results by installing a new homepage, search engine tool or toolbar, but in most of the cases, even if some useful feature is provided, it won’t be enough to compensate for the pop-up ads disturbance and the page-redirects that you will likely be forced to deal with.

You most probably won’t be able to surf the web without getting frequently interrupted at least couple of times by various offers, banners, blinking boxes and some sponsored pay-per-click tabs or links. Not only could this be very irritating, but it could also lead to potential exposure to security hazards if you are not careful with what you click on. After all, the web space is full of sneaky viruses and nasty infections such as Ransomware, Trojan horses, Spyware and it oftentimes takes no more than a single wrong click on the wrong piece of web content in order to get infected. So, why would you risk getting redirected by some obscure ad-generating to a potential malware-carrier?

The good news is that applications like WeKnow.ac Virus will generally not threaten your safety directly because they normally can’t initiate any criminal actions inside the system. Typically, their activities are not intended to cause harm but to advertise different products. These pieces of software are programmed to promote certain products, services, applications or websites on the users’ screen because this is how they earn pay-per-click revenue for their creators.

Here is the basic idea behind the very existence of hijackers like WeKnow.ac malware – the people who want to have their products advertised online usually pay for that to digital marketers or hijacker developers on a pay-per-click basis. Then, with the help of applications like WeKnow.ac Virus, the ads get displayed on the users’ screens and eventually get clicked on and thus gain traffic and exposure. Each party benefits from the entire thing except, obviously, the end-users, whose screens gets flooded with potentially unwanted promotional materials. Fortunately, there is a quick and reliable way to remove the annoying ads and uninstall their source and the instructions on this page will help you with that if you follow them carefully.

To keep your mac and pc free from browser hijackers in the future, we advise you to avoid their most common sources. These are usually the different free download platforms where torrents, shareware, free apps and application bundles are distributed. Also, if you ever need to install some new application on your mac and pc, don’t forget to read the EULA and select the more detailed installation option (Advanced/Manual/Custom) in order to have full control over the installation process and to disable any additional or potentially unwanted “bonus” applications on time.

SUMMARY:

Name	WeKnow.AC
Type	Browser Redirect for Mac
Danger Level	Medium (nowhere near threats like Ransomware, but still a security risk)
Symptoms	Your screen may get constantly spammed with various ads, pop-ups and banners.
Distribution Method	Software bundling and free automatic installers are the main distribution method of this program.

How To Remove Weknow.ac Malware Guide

Method 1 For Mac:

Here is how to remove the hijacker/malware from your administrator list:

Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Users & Groups.
Click , on the name of each entity you did not authorize as administrators of your computer. Delete the suspect names. In my case it was weknow.ac that had hijacked my mac.

Once you remove the name of the hijacker, you should quit the google chrome and reopen it. Upon reopening chrome, you should then proceed to “settings” on chrome to remove the offending malware/hijacker from your browser, search engine, etc.

Method 2 For Mac

Start off by opening System Preferences, > click the Profiles icon. Here you should see a list items listed. Some may appear legitimate, but others are not. You can identify the bad ones by looking at the information for each profile. Bad entries (or entry) may say “com.myshopcoupon” somewhere, and should also refer to “weknow.ac”. All such entries should be deleted immediately.

Step 1: Closing Safari (or any other browser that you may be using at the moment)

First, you will need to close your browser if it is still open. If you can’t do that normally, you will need to Force Quit it:

Open the Apple Menu and select Force Quit to do that. You can also use the ⌘ key + Option Key combination to open the Force Quit Applications dialog box. In this box, select the Safari browser (or whatever browser you are using) and then click on the Quit button. Confirm the action by selecting Force Quit again.

Step 1: Closing Safari (or any other browser that you may be using at the moment)

First, you will need to close your browser if it is still open. If you can’t do that normally, you will need to Force Quit it:

Step 2: Killing suspicious processes

Open Finder and go to Applications > Utilities and then open Activity Monitor. Now take a careful look at the processes there – look for any that seem suspicious, unknown and questionable. If you think that a given process may be the culprit behind the issue or may at least be related to it, highlight it with the mouse and select the i option at its top.

In the box that opens, click on Sample.

Scan the sample files with the online scanner we have on this page and if any of them get flagged as malicious, delete them and then kill their processes.

Step 3: Safely launching the browser

Hold the Shift from your keyboard and then launch Safari – holding Shift will prevent any previously opened pages to load again, just in case any of them were related to the problem.

If any problematic pages still load after you safe-launch the browser, then do the following:

Force-Quit the browser (Safari) again and then turn off your Wi-Fi connection by clicking on the Wi-Fi off option from the Mac Menu. If you are using cable Internet, simply disconnect the cable from your Mac.

Step 4: Uninstalling suspicious extensions

After you safe-launch Safari and are sure none of the previously opened pages load now, go to Preferences > Extensions.

Select and uninstall (by clicking on the Uninstall button) all extensions there that are unfamiliar to you or that you think may be suspicious. If you are not sure about a certain extension, it’s better to uninstall it – no extension is required for the normal functioning of the browser.

Step 5: Cleaning Safari

If you have other browsers aside from Safari, do the following:

In Safari, open Preferences from the browser’s menu and go to Privacy.

Select Remove All Website Data and then Remove Now. Note that this will delete all stored site data including any saved passwords and usernames. In other words, you will have to manually log-in to every site where you have a registration so make sure you remember your usernames and passwords.

Back in Preferences, click on General and see what your Safari’s homepage is. If it has been changed without your permission, change it back to what it used to be or to whatever you like it to be now.

Now go to the History menu and select the Clear History option.

Do the same to all other browsers you may have in your computer – here are examples with Chrome and Firefox.

If none of these methods work, please leave a comment bellow to help you with this processes and also try the removal guide bellow.

Android user, please use our Android Malware Removal guide.

The following guide will help our readers get rid of the unpleasant WeKnow.ac software. Follow the instructions and complete each step for best results. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them using our comment section down below.

Preparation: Entering Safe Mode and Revealing Hidden Files and Folders

Before you proceed with the actual removal instructions, you will need to take two extra steps in order to ensure that the guide has maximum effect.

For best results, we advise our readers to boot into Safe Mode prior to attempting to remove the virus. If you do not know how to do that, here is a separate How to Enter Safe Mode guide.

Also, in order to be able to see any potentially undesirable files, you should reveal any hidden files and folders on your PC – here is how to do that.

Removing WeKnow.ac

Step 1: Checking the Task Manager

Open your Task Manager by using the Ctrl + Shift + Esc keys and go to the Processes tab. Look for any suspicious processes. For example, any unfamiliar process that uses high amounts of RAM and/or CPU. If you aren’t sure if a certain process comes from malware, tell us in the comments.

Right-click on any process that you consider shady and select Open File Location. Delete anything from the file location of the process.

Step 2: Disabling Startup programs

Use the Winkey + R keyboard combination to open the Run search bar and type msconfig. Hit Enter and in the newly opened window, go to the Startup tab. There, look for suspicious entries with unknown manufacturer or ones that have the name WeKnow.ac on them. Right-click on those, and select disable.

Step 3: Uninstalling unwanted programs

Go to Start Menu > Control Panel > Uninstall a Program. Click on Installed On to sort the entries by date from most recent to oldest and look through the programs that come at the top of the list. Right-click on any entries that appear shady and unwanted and then select Uninstall to remove them from your PC. If you see the name WeKnow.ac in the list of programs, be sure to remove the software without hesitation.

Step 4: Checking for shady IP’s

Open your Start Menu and copy-paste notepad %windir%/system32/Drivers/etc/hosts in the search bar. In the notepad file, look below Localhost and see if there are any IP addresses there. If there are some, send them to us in the comments and we will tell you if you should take any action.

Step 5: Cleaning-up the browsers

You will also have to uninstall any undesirable browser extensions from your browser programs. Here’s how to do that for some of the more popular browsers:

Chrome

Open Chrome and open its main menu. Go to More Tools > Extensions. Look through the list of extensions and uninstall any that you think could be suspicious. To remove them – click on the trash can icon next to each extension.

You can also use a specialized Chrome CleanUp tool if you cannot manually remove a certain extension. Here is an article where you can learn more about the CleanUp tool.

Firefox

Open Firefox and go to its Menu. Select the Add-ons button.From the left panel, select Extensions and take a look at the different entries. Remove any of the that might be unwanted.

Once you open your IE browser, click on the Tools button at the top-right corner of the program and from the drop-down menu select Manage Add-ons. Check each one of the four different groups of add-ons and search for anything that seems undesirable. If you find anything, click on it and them select Remove.

Edge

Open the main menu of Microsoft Edge and go to Extensions. Find the extensions that you believe could be unwanted and right-click on them. Then, select Uninstall.

Step 6: Checking the Registry Editor

Open the Run search bar again and type regedit in it. Hit Enter and once the Registry Editor opens press Ctrl + F. In the search field type WeKnow.ac and click on Find Next. Tell us in the comments if any results came up when you searched for WeKnow.ac in your PC’s Registry.

Step 7: Deleting recent entries

For this step, you will have to open your Start Menu and copy-paste the following lines, one by one:

%AppData%
%LocalAppData%
%ProgramData%
%WinDir%
%Temp%

Hit Enter after each one to open a file directory. In the directories, delete the most recent entries that you find there. In the Temp folder, delete all files.

Step 8: System Restore

In order to be fully sure that the unwanted software has been removed from your machine, you can also try using a Restore Point to roll back your system its last stable configuration. However, in order to do that, you would have to previously had had a restore point created. On most systems, such points get created automatically but this isn’t always the case.

If you want to learn how to configure System Restore and how to manually create Restore Points, follow this link.

Open your Start Menu and type System Restore.
Click on the first result – a setup wizard should open.
Read the brief description of the process and select Next.
Now, choose a restore from the presented list. You can also check the Show more restore points option in order to reveal any other restore points that might be saved on your PC.
Click on Scan for affected programs to see what programs will get deleted or restored after you use the Restore Point. (optional)
Click on next and take and then select Finish.
A warning window will appear telling you that once the process starts, it shouldn’t be interrupted. Select Yes and be patient as this might take some time. Do not do anything on your PC throughout the duration of the process.

Step 9: Windows Refresh/Reset

Use this method only if nothing else has worked so far as it is a last resort option. If you do not know how to do it, this separate guide will give you the information that you need.