I don’t understand why it is that Avast Online Security doesn’t provide a red circle warning about the Softonic website where, unless you’re very careful, you will be downloading a browser hijacker as well as the software program you thought you were going to get … in my case the VLC Media Player.
Firefox, IE and Chrome were all trashed by Softonic Websearch. Neither SuperAnti-spyware nor Malwarebytes would remove it, but this from Malware Tips was very useful: http://malwaretips.com/blogs/remove-softonic-web-search/