Yahoo Search has hijacked all my internet browsers (Safari, Firefox). How to remove the adware/malware?
Today I installed a program that I'm familiar with and that I have used before called Filezilla using SourceForge. I've never had a problem with it before, and I only uninstalled it because I had no need for it. So I moved to install it again and thought it was strange it kept asking for key permission (so I said no). All the sudden my fireox browser disappeared I had some crapware installed I had no interest in, plus another unpleasant surprise: whenever I load firefox OR Safari Yahoo search comes up even though my default for Safari is google search. How do I fix this? I'm trying to delete the program it came from but it says that it's 'in use', but when I pull up the task manager all that shows up are finder and Microsoft Word. Any word on how I can delete the covert adware/malware?
Solution 1:
So after downloading Vuze a while back, I wound up with api.mybrowserbar redirects and a bunch of stuff pointing at some thing called Spigot, deterministically finger banging my bandwidth and internet experience in general.
Sorry, this assumes some knowledge of the command line and file structures.
The solution, grep is your friend.
Open Terminal and navigate to /Users/YOUR_COMPUTER_USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome
YOUR_COMPUTER_USERNAME must of course be replaced with your computer username, you can retrieve it by running the whoami command in your terminal.
grep -rnw '.' -e 'spigot'
and
grep -rnw '.' -e 'api.mybrowserbar'
get in there and remove that shit.
In the most annoying case, their genius software made itself the default restart page for whenever chrome unexpectedly crashes. This little tidbit is located deep inside a sort of huge JSON blob at
/Users/YOUR_COMPUTER_USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Preferences
Solution 2:
This response IS for a Mac user, specifically, OS X 10.11(El Capitan).
That said, I set all my machines up with the exact same programs (again Mac machines only), and even version specific (browsers, etc.), see why this is relevant here-->. Of the units that reach out to the web, the Mac Pro, Mac Mini, or MacBook Pro 17, has NOT been affected. *Not going to give hardware specs as I'd be on here all day. This has only affected a MacBook Pro 15(2013 model) via Google Chrome.
Part of my job is finding and ending problems such as this, so I've done a bit of research on the issue and this is what I have come up with, I certainly hope it helps someone:
In this case, certain Chrome 'Extensions' appear to worm there way into the Extensions list. Heres a small list of extensions that install without user consent: "Amazon Shopping Assistant by Spigot", "Domain Error Assistant", "Ebay Shopping Assistant by Spigot" and "Slick Savings." In my case, I narrowing my logs down to an extension called "domain error assistant" being the first installed without user consent. The yahoo search engine appeared relentlessly even after all browser cache was deleted.
My Fix? Save bookmarks, etc. Trash ALL extensions, Remove Chrome, reinstall Chrome. Its been good for over a month now.
Good Luck!
Solution 3:
I had the same problem in Safari using Mac OS, and I found the problem was caused an extension called Any Search that got installed in the browser when installing some other app. I removed it, and it solved the problem.