Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Google as default search engine in Chrome


10.25.11: Problem keeping Google as search engine in Chrome

This is unusual as it has not been detected by spyware tools to-date.

I use the Google Chrome browser for various reasons (faster, retains keyed information, ease-of-use, etc).

One very useful feature is using the address bar for searching (and the auto-completion/loading of searches).

I am able to easily default the search engine to Google (by far the best search engine in the world).
By the way, it is very difficult to alter the search engine to Google in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

After setting it as the default, I was surprised to see Yahoo appear as my search engine in Chrome.

Upon doing some investigation, I discovered a spyware item not yet picked up by Malwarebytes (very surprising, as it has never failed me before).

Enlarge the pic (left-click) to see where to find the SPIGOT malware folder and delete it.


2 comments:

  1. some people do not consider this as malware especially the company at http://www.spigot.com/ which creates toolbars for marketing purposes - my version of Spigot came with a free PDF reader I have used for years from PDF Forge named PDFxchange viewer. But I removed it anyway via Control Panel | Uninstall a program (Windows 7) and searched for Spigot and when found, right clicked and selected Uninstall.
    No problems with selecting the default search engine in my version of Internet Explorer (8.0) and Google autocompletes searches in Internet Explorer. I only recently reinstalled Chrome since I could not view my radar on http://www.theweathernetwork.com in High Speed Mode but could on Chrome - Chrome takes too many liberties because of the relationship with Google - so I keep it shut down unless I need the radar for golfing purposes - otherwise let it rain! BC

    ReplyDelete
  2. and furthermore... I have used Norton's Anti Virus software for years and always get the latest version of the most powerful product which I believe is currently Norton 360 Premier Edition which I updated a couple of months ago - protects 3 computers for about $60 a year on sale. It detected Spigot but as regards being a threat is is classified as Info - versus the higher severity risk levels of High, Medium, Low and Info being the last in the list. BC

    ReplyDelete