You've more than likely come across a website that redirects you to an alternate page on its server, or to a webpage hosted on a completely different server.
Monetized advertisements use this tactic frequently, and unfortunately so too do scammers. In the last year the infamous Critical Alert from Microsoft has bothered a lot of people, and no doubt some have been fooled into calling expensive phone numbers, or paying someone to fix the alleged security risk such browser redirects claim.
Unlike many browsers, Microsoft Edge seems a little buggy when it comes to its settings which allow you to control how the browser responds to a crash or forced shutdown (i.e. using end task in Task Manager to close Browser), and this can be a problem for those who have managed to stumble into one of these scam alert websites.
The symptoms:
A simple solution
Once this is done in future when your Microsoft Edge browser crashes, or you force it to close using end task via Task Manager, there is no way a browser redirect infection can trap you In an infinity loop; thus should you be unfortunate to get hit by one, you will be able to open a new browser session and then use its Settings to clear the cookies and cached files thus ridding yourself of the redirection issue.
This is my preferred means to deal with such issues, however if you do not wish to go down this route, then consider grabbing a third party tool such as CCleaner which can erase cookies and cached data from Microsoft Edge before you re-open it, and in most instances prevent that infinity loop issue.
Ideally you'll take action before such an issue occurs, however, you can still do the registry tweak, or install CCleaner, later and resolve such issues too.
Regards,
Regedit32
Monetized advertisements use this tactic frequently, and unfortunately so too do scammers. In the last year the infamous Critical Alert from Microsoft has bothered a lot of people, and no doubt some have been fooled into calling expensive phone numbers, or paying someone to fix the alleged security risk such browser redirects claim.
Unlike many browsers, Microsoft Edge seems a little buggy when it comes to its settings which allow you to control how the browser responds to a crash or forced shutdown (i.e. using end task in Task Manager to close Browser), and this can be a problem for those who have managed to stumble into one of these scam alert websites.
The symptoms:
- Your browser redirects to a new page in a new tab
- Continuous pop ups appear alerting you to an alleged security risk
- Browser eventually freezes forcing you to open Task Manager and end task the Microsoft Edge browser
- On re-opening Microsoft Edge, the scam site opens its own tab and continues this loop until you figure out how to remove your cookies and session caches.
A simple solution
- Right-click on Windows flag
- Left-click on Command Prompt (Admin)
- When the User Account Control alert appears select Yes
- Now in the Command Prompt: Administrator console type the following:
Code:reg add "HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\MicrosoftEdge\Recovery" /v AutoRecover /t reg_dword /d 0x00000002
Press Enter key to execute
If successful you will see as below:
This will modify your Windows Registry by adding MicrosoftEdge\Recovery as a sub-key and the Value: AutoRecover to this key like so:
Once this is done in future when your Microsoft Edge browser crashes, or you force it to close using end task via Task Manager, there is no way a browser redirect infection can trap you In an infinity loop; thus should you be unfortunate to get hit by one, you will be able to open a new browser session and then use its Settings to clear the cookies and cached files thus ridding yourself of the redirection issue.
This is my preferred means to deal with such issues, however if you do not wish to go down this route, then consider grabbing a third party tool such as CCleaner which can erase cookies and cached data from Microsoft Edge before you re-open it, and in most instances prevent that infinity loop issue.
Ideally you'll take action before such an issue occurs, however, you can still do the registry tweak, or install CCleaner, later and resolve such issues too.
Regards,
Regedit32
