This page shows how to remove rules.similardeals.net from Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.

Does this sound like what you are seeing right now? You see rules.similardeals.net in your web browser’s statusbar while browsing at web sites that in general don’t load any content from third party domains. Maybe the rules.similardeals.net domain appear when performing a search at the Google search engine?

(Sorry for the ridiculous use of watermarks. I have to do it to stop the copy-cats.)

Here are some of the status bar messages you may see in your browser’s status bar:

• Waiting for rules.similardeals.net…
• Transferring data from rules.similardeals.net…
• Looking up rules.similardeals.net…
• Read rules.similardeals.net
• Connected to rules.similardeals.net…

If this description sounds like your machine, you probably have some potentially unwanted program installed on your computer that makes the rules.similardeals.net domain appear in your browser. Don’t write angry emails to the website you were browsing, they are almost certainly not responsible for the rules.similardeals.net status bar messages. The potentially unwanted program on your machine is. I’ll do my best to help you with the rules.similardeals.net removal in this blog post.

Those that have been spending some time on this blog already know this, but for new visitors: Not long ago I dedicated a few of my lab systems and deliberately installed some potentially unwanted programs on them. Since then I have been following the actions on these systems to see what kinds of advertisements, if any, that are displayed. I’m also looking on other interesting things such as if the potentially unwanted program auto-updates, or if it installs additional software on the machines. I first observed rules.similardeals.net in Mozilla Firefox’s statusbar on one of these lab machines.

similardeals.net resolves to the 54.245.101.60 address and rules.similardeals.net to 184.73.180.242. rules.similardeals.net was registered on 2015-01-09.

So, how do you remove rules.similardeals.net from your browser? On the machine where rules.similardeals.net showed up in the status bar I had WebShield, Wajam, PrimaryColor, mystartsearch, SFKEX64.exe, PhaseProfessor, FastSearch, YTDownloader and SSFK.exe installed. I removed them with FreeFixer and that stopped the browser from loading data from rules.similardeals.net.

The issue with status bar messages like this one is that it can be caused by many variants of potentially unwanted programs, not just the potentially unwanted program on my computer. This makes it impossible to say exactly what you need to remove to stop the status bar messages.

So, what can be done to solve the problem? To remove rules.similardeals.net you need to review your computer for potentially unwanted programs and uninstall them. Here’s my suggested removal procedure:

The first thing I would do to remove rules.similardeals.net is to examine the software installed on the machine, by opening the “Uninstall programs” dialog. You can find this dialog from the Windows Control Panel. If you are using one of the more recent versions of Windows you can just type in “uninstall” in the Control Panel’s search field to find that dialog:

Click on the “Uninstall a program” link and the Uninstall programs dialog will open up:

Do you see something suspicious listed there or something that you don’t remember installing? Tip: Sort on the “Installed On” column to see if something was installed about the same time as you started seeing the rules.similardeals.net status bar messages.

Then I would check the web browser add-ons. Potentially unwanted programs often show up under the add-ons dialog in Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer or Safari. Is there anything that looks suspicious? Anything that you don’t remember installing?

I think most users will be able to track down and remove the potentially unwanted program with the steps outlined above, but in case that did not work you can try the FreeFixer removal tool to identify and remove the potentially unwanted program. FreeFixer is a freeware tool that I’ve developed since 2006. Freefixer is a tool designed to manually find and uninstall unwanted software. When you’ve found the unwanted files you can simply tick a checkbox and click on the Fix button to remove the unwanted file.

FreeFixer’s removal feature is not locked like many other removal tools out there. It will not require you to purchase the program just when you are about to remove the unwanted files.

And if you’re having problems deciding if a file is clean or potentially unwanted in FreeFixer’s scan report, click on the More Info link for the file. That will open up your web browser with a page which contains additional information about the file. On that web page, check out the VirusTotal report which can be very useful:

Did you find any potentially unwanted program on your machine? Did that stop rules.similardeals.net? Please post the name of the potentially unwanted program you uninstalled from your machine in the comment below.

Thank you!