Text Enhance, that frustrating, evil, underlined ad..

If you have ever been to a website injected with links that instantly pop up ads in your way blocking you from reading the article, you know what Text Enhance is.

Before I go on, here are some images showing you what I mean:

Text Enhance installs itself into your browser.. This has almost never been added by the webmaster.

Text Enhance doesn't ask you if you wanted it to be installed. It just installs itself quietly and invisibly.

-- Removing this junk --

I am glad to tell you removing Text Enhance is fairly easy.

First of all, it's not in the website, it's on your computer. Nearly 100% of the time, in fact.

Here is the quick howto for removal:

Removing Add-Ons/Extensions

Chrome: click on the wrench/3 bars at the top right, then select Tools, then Extensions and remove any extensions you don't remember installing.

IE: click Tools, then Manage Add-Ons and remove any extensions you don't remember installing.

Firefox: click Tools, then Add Ons and remove any extensions you don't remember installing.

If you go into extensions and find nothing extra there, then you may have to remove one extension after another until you find the culprit.

*Text Enhance sometimes calls itself a codec, it has also been known as Facetheme, Better Links, Vid Save or Vidsaver.

If you have removed your extensions only to find it's still there, then re-install any extensions you like along with adblock plus. This will stop it.

https://adblockplus.org/

Add/Remove Programs

Text Enhance can actually install itself, especially in older OS's like Windows XP.

In Windows XP, go into Control Panel and choose Add/Remove Programs and look for software you don't recognize. If in doubt, don't uninstall. Text Enhance can be listed under several names.

In Windows 7 go into Control Panel and choose Programs & Features. Again, if in doubt don't uninstall. It most likely won't be named "Text Enhance". (That would be too easy to remove then.)

If you could not find the culprit under extensions, add ons or the control panel in Windows, then you will need to install something like Spybot Search & Destroy, which is a free and very effective spyware/malware remover made by PepiMK Software.

I suggest downloading it from FileHippo.com. They are anal about virus testing their files, and they offer older versions and beta versions of the software they house.

The FileHippo link for Spybot S&D is here:
http://www.filehippo.com/download_spybot_search_destroy/

For Linux: The only thing that stopped it for me on my Chromium installation was adblock plus. It's free, and solved my issue immediately.

https://adblockplus.org/

I hope this has helped.
-Denny