Except for a small whitelist of known safe entries, HijackThis does not discriminate between legitimate and unwanted items. Inexperienced users are advised to exercise caution or seek help when using the latter option. HijackThis can generate a plain-text logfile detailing all entries it finds, and some entries can be fixed by HijackThis.

On February 16, 2012, Trend Micro released the HijackThis source code as open source and it is now available on the SourceForge site. Browser hijacking can cause malware to be installed on a computer. HijackThis is used primarily for diagnosis of malware, not to remove or detect spyware-as uninformed use of its removal facilities can cause significant software damage to a computer. The program is notable for quickly scanning a user's computer to display the most common locations of malware, rather than relying on a database of known spyware. It was originally created by Merijn Bellekom, and later sold to Trend Micro. HijackThis (also HiJackThis or HJT) is a free and open-source tool to detect malware and adware on Microsoft Windows.

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