1st Browser is a legitimate browser extension offering useful features that supposedly save time and money to its users. Malware researchers, however, classify it as a PUP (potentially unwanted program) as it does exhibit some malicious traits.
1st Browser Features
1st Browser is a browser extension compatible with the most commonly used browsers – Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox.
According to its official website, the tool promises the following:
- To track your surfing habits and shape itself accordingly for an ultimate comfort of use, saving you both time and money
- To enable you to navigate with confidence, to keep you safe while surfing the web with a special antivirus and malware protection
- To allow you to еnjoy thousands of chat smileys, emoticons and stickers making every chat conversation with your friends more fun than ever
It also claims to be “the best website” for chatting, downloading, shopping, etc.
Why Is 1st Browser Considered a PUP?
As much as 1st Browser promises great features that will save time and money to its users, the browser extension’s presence on your PC may appear a bit disturbing.
What we mean is that once inside your system, 1st Browser may start generating various pop-up ads that will appear on your screen, and/ or multiple banners and in-text hyperlinks may flood the websites you normally visit. As much as these pop-ups are annoying, they may appear a bit dangerous too. Clicking them may redirect you to unwanted pages which may be infected with malware. 1st Browser is not responsible for the content of these webpages and thus – it cannot be held responsible if your system gets infected.
Also, in order to personalize your search experience, 1st Browser collects certain information from you. According to its privacy policy, it will collect:
- Personal information (personally identifiable) such as login details
- Non-personal information (non-identifying information) such as information you search and browsing history, IP addresses, browser type and version, OS, time spent on visited pages, etc.
In addition, you can manually download 1st Browser from its official website, but there are cases when 1st Browser enters your system uninvited. That may happen if the browser extension is bundled with other freeware you download from the Web.
To protect your system from unwanted and potentially malicious software, you should always disallow the bundling during the installation of any freeware you download from the Web.
Should You Remove 1st Browser from Your PC?
In case you have personally downloaded 1st Browser, find its features useful, and have not experienced any disturbances so far, you may continue to use it.
If, however, it has entered your PC without your consent, and/or it has started disturbing your browsing experience, we recommend you to remove it. Although 1st Browser claims to have an anti-virus protection integrated to ensure your safe browsing, there is still no guarantee it could fully protect you from the various threats on the Web.
In order to remove 1st Browser, you must use a well-trusted anti-malware tool that will scan your whole computer, detect the threat and remove it completely.