Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) have a reputation for sneaky behavior and the Dotdo adware PUP has its own methods of going about it.



You see, this particular PUP, which gets installed on your system bundled with other legitimate programs, is an adware family that sneakily inserts ads in the websites users visit.
To be able to do this, it first needs to know what users are surfing online. For this, Dotdo will install its own version of the Fiddler Web traffic debug application, which inspects traffic using a local proxy running on 127.0.0.1:8877.
To make sure all the browsers send the traffic to this proxy, Dotdo borrows a trick from the WebSearcher PUP, and alters the configuration of all local browsers, changing their proxy settings to point at its server, but in a way in which regular, non-technical users can't change it back, making it look like a default setting.
Dotdo blacklists domains for security products To put the cherry on top, Dotdo also goes one step further than WebSearcher and also creates a block list for websites it doesn't want users to visit, Malwarebytes reports.
On this list there are many officials sites for security products like Malwarebytes, ZoneAlarm, and Comodo Firewall, but there are also download centers like FileHippo, CNet, PCMag, and even torrent sites like Kickass Torrents.
This means that users that may want to download and install a security product and scan their system may have a hard time accessing those sites to do so, always being faced with a blank white page.
The good thing is that Softpedia is not on that list, and you can download all the security software you want without Dotdo standing in your way. Since Dotdo really wants you to stay away from these products, here are their download/buy pages on Softpedia: Malwarebytes, ZoneAlarm, and Comodo Firewall.