SurveyMeta

SurveyMeta is a rather suspicious desktop application that may pose a threat to your system security. Although it claims to offer you an opportunity to earn money online by taking surveys, we have found that this is simply another ad-supported application you should not fully trust. As a matter of fact, this program seems to promote affiliated websites that may not even be reliable. In addition to that, this adware may also annoy you with potentially harmful third-party ads. All in all, this questionable application may expose you to unsafe third-party content and thus, cyber criminals. We believe that you should remove SurveyMeta as soon as possible if you want to stop this source of potential threats to your virtual security. What’s more, it is also quite likely that this malware infection is not even the only one on your operating system. Please read our full report on this application to learn more about how you can protect your PC against similar threats.

This application has an official webpage, which is quite questionable. We do not advise you to visit surveymeta.com because this page gets blocked by security software since it is detected as a threat. It only gets worse, when you realize that the official installer you can download from this page contains a number of other malicious software installers, such as Search Know and Sweet-page.com. These infections seem to be dependent on your locality and may also change in time. However, this clearly shows that the presence of this adware may easily indicate that your computer has been infected with several infections, including other adware applications, browser hijackers, and potentially unwanted programs as well.

We have discovered that this adware is not region-specific, which means that you can be infected with it all over the world. And, of course, the infection may not happen through the “official” source either. We have noticed that this adware can enter your computer in a couple of ways. It can come from a download offer you click on. It is also possible that you have a browser hijacker on board and you use it for web search. In this case, you may be presented with manipulated search results. Clicking on an infected link or ad on such a page could result in downloading this useless application. And we also need to mention the possibility that this adware might come in a freeware bundle as well. Such malicious bundles can be found on questionable P2P websites, such as freeware, torrent as well as pornographic pages. These sites are full of third-party advertising. Some of these ads may not even look like ads, but, instead, they imitate a button or a system error message. If you click on such content, you may download a whole package of malware installers. This is how most unsuspecting users actually infect their computers without their knowledge. If any of this is familiar and may have happened in your case as well, we advise you to delete SurveyMeta right away and scan your computer with a reliable malware scanner to determine whether there are other infections on board. Leaving anything suspicious on your system could mean future headaches and higher system vulnerability.

After you download this useless application from its website, you are redirected to redtag-specials.com/?agent_ID=201735&campaign_ID=6089, which offer does not seem to exist anymore. We have found that this website, redtag-specials.com, is one of the affiliates this adware tends to promote. It may also open an Internet Explorer browser window from time to time to promote such sites. This previously mentioned site hosts sponsored advertisements in a number of categories, including credit card offers, life insurance, and lose weight fast. However, you need to be very careful with visiting this website because an up-to-date anti-malware application may block its content as it may detect Trojans hosted on the site. This adware may also begin displaying other potentially unreliable third-party commercial advertisements, which may take you to similarly unsafe websites. This kind of exposure may take its toll and you may infect your computer with more malware threats. But you may also find yourself in the center of an online scam as well. If you wish to avoid such scenarios, we suggest that you remove SurveyMeta ASAP.

You can actually consider yourself lucky because this adware has a working uninstaller. All you need to do is find and run this uninstaller through your Control Panel. This may leave a few leftover files, though, two registry entries in particular. Please follow our instructions below if you need help with uninstalling an application and cleaning up your registry. If you would like to protect your PC more effectively, we recommend that you apply a trustworthy anti-malware application. Keeping this security tool update will give your system proper protection against all known malware infections.

Remove SurveyMeta from Windows

Windows 8/Windows 8.1/Windows 10

1. Press Win+X and choose Programs and Features.
2. Click on the application and click Uninstall.

Windows Vista/Windows 7

1. Press Win+R and type in Control Panel. Hit OK.
2. Select Uninstall a program.
3. Click on the application and click Uninstall.

Windows XP

1. Access the Start menu and select Control Panel.
2. Pick Add or Remove Programs.
3. Click on the application and click Remove.

Remove Leftovers

1. Press Win+R and type in regedit. Click OK.
2. Locate and delete these registry keys:
   HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\DOMStorage\surveymeta.com
   HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\DOMStorage\www.surveymeta.com
3. Restart your computer.