Hello tomshardware users.
I have bought a laptop (W10) that came with Mc-Afee installed and I let its trial period finish. After It finished, I wanted to install another antivirus because it was always popping "buy me" messages and it either wasn't giving me any errors or was giving errors on safe files. I was searching on virustotal for that files and on the report page, even mcafee reported that file as clean. (I don't remember which files was it but it was all clean.)
After uninstalling and a short period of searching, I decided to install Kaspersky's free trial because I have heard lots of good things about it on the internet, like it is very accurate, has the worlds largest virus definition database etc.. So I did and weird things started to happen to me.
After first install, I searched my pc and it deleted some viruses. I used it for 10 days and sometimes, when I open my pc, my saved passwords on firefox got reset, some game saves got lost, some programs reset them to their default settings. It wasn't a big deal but recently, I wanted to download the new forza game from windows store. I opened Windows Store, but It gave me an error. I have searched for that error and a small amount of people suggested disabling antivirus softwares and firewall and trying again. I disabled kaspersky and windows firewall but it didn't connect. After some time, I realized that I wasn't able to open weather app on my pc.
Yesterday evening, I looked at netstat to see what is using my internet. When I wasn't connected to internet, It showed a ton of "anchorfree:RANDOMNUMBERS". I looked at networx app which shows network speed and a bunch of useful tools, It seemed that all of the connections were made by kaspersky. I looked at my hosts file, anchorfree.com was disabled, I also disabled anchorfree.net, but after a restart, It was (and still is) connected to anchorfree.
Today, I opened my computer to uninstall kaspersky (which gave me 10 gb of space on my drive) and didn't install anything. I rebooted my computer, and netcut opened. It right now shows me 2 connections, one of them is to "a.ads1.msn.com" by "0.0.0.0" and other is "anchorfree.net" by "127.0.0.1". My firefox settings are also reset (firefox sync logged out, all of the bookmarks, history and even default search page is reset, extensions are uninstalled), and that's just all of the things I have seen before coming here.
Right now, I don't even have a question to ask, I have at least one hundred. Why is my computer connecting to anchorfree.net even after disabling it from hosts file? How can i disable it? Why I wasn't able to connect to Windows services before uninstalling kaspersky? What should I do now?...
Right now, I enabled Windows Defender and waiting for an answer or suggestion. If anyone has any, I will be very happy to read and maybe do them.
It was a very long question but I wanted to give every information possible. I thank anyone who takes their time to read this in advance.
(I just realized that my network manager disabled all of the non http(s) connections on the wifi, I can't connect to vpn's, ftp's, anything over UDP protocol and maybe kaspersky was trying to keep me safe with using anchorfree's vpn servers and that's why only I wasn't able to connect to Store, but that doesn't explains how I am stil connected to anchorfree, why do I need to be safe when trying to learn how the weather is going to be and not when I want to read my emails, and other questions.)
I have bought a laptop (W10) that came with Mc-Afee installed and I let its trial period finish. After It finished, I wanted to install another antivirus because it was always popping "buy me" messages and it either wasn't giving me any errors or was giving errors on safe files. I was searching on virustotal for that files and on the report page, even mcafee reported that file as clean. (I don't remember which files was it but it was all clean.)
After uninstalling and a short period of searching, I decided to install Kaspersky's free trial because I have heard lots of good things about it on the internet, like it is very accurate, has the worlds largest virus definition database etc.. So I did and weird things started to happen to me.
After first install, I searched my pc and it deleted some viruses. I used it for 10 days and sometimes, when I open my pc, my saved passwords on firefox got reset, some game saves got lost, some programs reset them to their default settings. It wasn't a big deal but recently, I wanted to download the new forza game from windows store. I opened Windows Store, but It gave me an error. I have searched for that error and a small amount of people suggested disabling antivirus softwares and firewall and trying again. I disabled kaspersky and windows firewall but it didn't connect. After some time, I realized that I wasn't able to open weather app on my pc.
Yesterday evening, I looked at netstat to see what is using my internet. When I wasn't connected to internet, It showed a ton of "anchorfree:RANDOMNUMBERS". I looked at networx app which shows network speed and a bunch of useful tools, It seemed that all of the connections were made by kaspersky. I looked at my hosts file, anchorfree.com was disabled, I also disabled anchorfree.net, but after a restart, It was (and still is) connected to anchorfree.
Today, I opened my computer to uninstall kaspersky (which gave me 10 gb of space on my drive) and didn't install anything. I rebooted my computer, and netcut opened. It right now shows me 2 connections, one of them is to "a.ads1.msn.com" by "0.0.0.0" and other is "anchorfree.net" by "127.0.0.1". My firefox settings are also reset (firefox sync logged out, all of the bookmarks, history and even default search page is reset, extensions are uninstalled), and that's just all of the things I have seen before coming here.
Right now, I don't even have a question to ask, I have at least one hundred. Why is my computer connecting to anchorfree.net even after disabling it from hosts file? How can i disable it? Why I wasn't able to connect to Windows services before uninstalling kaspersky? What should I do now?...
Right now, I enabled Windows Defender and waiting for an answer or suggestion. If anyone has any, I will be very happy to read and maybe do them.
It was a very long question but I wanted to give every information possible. I thank anyone who takes their time to read this in advance.
(I just realized that my network manager disabled all of the non http(s) connections on the wifi, I can't connect to vpn's, ftp's, anything over UDP protocol and maybe kaspersky was trying to keep me safe with using anchorfree's vpn servers and that's why only I wasn't able to connect to Store, but that doesn't explains how I am stil connected to anchorfree, why do I need to be safe when trying to learn how the weather is going to be and not when I want to read my emails, and other questions.)
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