GoHip Browser hijacker

Visitors to Gohip's current website (http://www.gohip.com/) will see a host of offers of eye catching "goodies" that to the unwary surfer may seem innocent and appealing. The link above is not active because I don't want anyone to inadvertently click on it and end up with the nasty little cookies that GoHip graciously slips to visitors. You may also get a popup window with a link to install some of their software.

When I last hit their site while researching this article, I decided to try their search feature; I typed "spyware" into the box and was taken to a page with several links, one of which was for a thing called "Guardian Monitor", which turned out to be a keystroke logger advertised under the dubious guise of a "Parental Control" tool. Ah, the deceptions we live with!

GoHip offers a so-called video search engine and "free movie player" combo that they call a "Browser Enhancement", which is actually an Active-X control. This will automatically execute when the user accepts the terms of their download agreement. Some of the things this piece of deception will do for you is to change your default home page to GoHip.com, and add a signature to all of your emails that reads: "Click here for Free Videos!", which is also a live link to "http://www.gohip.com/freevideo/".

Some of the other freebies that GoHip will graciously do for (to) you, as openly stated on their Privacy page as of this writing:

If you are unlucky enough to have this thing installed on your system, you can get rid of it by going Here: (http://www.gohip.com/remove_browser_enhancement.html)

As a side note that may be of interest to a few of you, I was also presented with a popup ad for "Yahoo Personals" while at their site...