Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

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bailapepe
Posts: 2
Joined: December 27th, 2017, 10:09 pm

Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

Post by bailapepe »

All of the sudden "yahoo search engine" has become the first search engine in firefox. I remove it and choose another search engine and this lasts until i close firefox and open it again. Everytime it comes back. I uninstalled firefox and installed it again and it keeps happening. I don't have extensions installed. Nothing.
I use Windows 7.
What can be done? Thank you.
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malliz
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Re: Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

Post by malliz »

Installed any other software lately?
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Happy112
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Joined: April 15th, 2017, 10:25 am
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Re: Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

Post by Happy112 »

Hi bailapepe !

Even though Yahoo Search is a legitimate search engine, you might be dealing with search.yahoo.com redirect virus, malware that you will of course want to get rid of.
Better safe than sorry, so would you please do this :

Go to the 3-bar menu (or 'Tools') => Addons => Extensions
and look for any unfamiliar or suspicious looking extensions,
like e.g. :

SafeSearch Incognito
SearchAssist Incognito
Search for Fire Fox 1.6
SafeSearch ch
SafeSearch net
Converter.onesearch org
File Convertor and Search Addon
Findwide Search Engine 1.7

When you find any : remove them.

Do the same in Windows Control Panel.

However : most malware will be 'hiding' somewhere , so
let's run malware scans :

Further information can be found in this article :
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tr ... e?cache=no

Run most or all of the listed malware scanners.
They all work differently - what one program doesn't pick up, the other might.

Also see :
https://malwaretips.com/blogs/remove-us ... yahoo-com/
bailapepe
Posts: 2
Joined: December 27th, 2017, 10:09 pm

Re: Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

Post by bailapepe »

malliz wrote:Installed any other software lately?
Yes, I installed Bittorent (I wanted to install qbittorent but I made a huge mistake), I think that was the cause, because it also installed another program, like an assistant for something but i uninstalled it inmediately. After uninstalling all of that, and uninstalling and reinstalling firefox, the problem persisted.
Happy112 wrote:Hi bailapepe !

Even though Yahoo Search is a legitimate search engine, you might be dealing with search.yahoo.com redirect virus, malware that you will of course want to get rid of.
Better safe than sorry, so would you please do this :

Go to the 3-bar menu (or 'Tools') => Addons => Extensions
and look for any unfamiliar or suspicious looking extensions,
like e.g. :
Thank you, but I explained in the first message that I had no extensions installed.
I also scanned for malware but found nothing.
Unfortunately I runned out of patience and decided to format. Now it's back to normal, but I have no idea what was that was forcing yahoo into Firefox. I guess this can serve as a warning: Not to install that damn bittorrent.
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Happy112
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Joined: April 15th, 2017, 10:25 am
Location: Never-Never-Land

Re: Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

Post by Happy112 »

bailapepe wrote: Thank you, but I explained in the first message that I had no extensions installed.
I also scanned for malware but found nothing.
Two reasons why I wanted you to check anyway :

1) Sometimes people forgot they ever installed an extension.
2) Some extensions 'install themselves' when you download another program.

But I'm glad that you got everything back to normal - well done !

Happy New Year !
Bigbird65
Posts: 4
Joined: February 22nd, 2018, 8:16 pm

Re: Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

Post by Bigbird65 »

Happy112, I have been having the same problem with Google converting to Yahoo search. When OfficeX came with this new laptop it installed the OfficeX addon. I uninstalled the trial OfficeX and installed an earlier version of Office that I had. When I did as you suggested and looked at addons, there it still was. I disabled OfficeX addon and the problem was gone.
Thanks a lot for the help.
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Happy112
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Location: Never-Never-Land

Re: Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

Post by Happy112 »

Bigbird65 wrote: Thanks a lot for the help.
My pleasure !

And thank you for letting us know about the OfficeX add-on - might be helpful to others with the same problem.
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ineuw
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Joined: March 19th, 2006, 4:17 pm
Location: Québec, Canada

Re: Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

Post by ineuw »

Having the same Yahoo problem in Firefox, http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... #p14793187. Yahoo did install an extension into Firefox, but it also installed some monitoring software elsewhere in the system. So, I used a free file explorer software named "Everything" and it really finds everything. It does it's own indexing and is very fast (doesn't rely on Windows indexing), I typed "yahoo" (or "yah") and it instantly found every occurrence of the search word, regardless of which part of the filename it existed. I found eight files and I deleted them. No more problem. You may have to select Windows explorer Tools\Folder options\View\Show hidden files and folders.

In the above mentioned post my concern is for future occurrences.
Firefox 115.0.2 (default install) in Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon 64 bit, updated on 2023-07-31 00:05
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Grumpus
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Re: Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

Post by Grumpus »

Have you looked in about:config?
There's a number of Yahoo related items which can be blanked or edited to DDG or some other search engine.
The MyYahoo content item can be blanked along with the two which go along with it.
Keeps Yahoo out of the system.
Makes whatever you edit in the default number 1.
In Linux Mint 18.x you should be able to find the search engine packages in the /usr/lib/firefox folders if you really don't want it.
Lately there's been some issues with dumping and it could be changes in the works for permanency so it may become a firewall issue.
Depends on how extreme you want to be.
Doesn't matter what you say, it's wrong for a toaster to walk around the house and talk to you
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ineuw
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Joined: March 19th, 2006, 4:17 pm
Location: Québec, Canada

Re: Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

Post by ineuw »

Grumpus, thank you. Cleared all yahoo related data. I wanted to be as extreme as possible because I am suffering from Yahoo's 1 billion email address breach, by which I have wide selection of impoverished royalty asking me for investments.
Firefox 115.0.2 (default install) in Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon 64 bit, updated on 2023-07-31 00:05
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Grumpus
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Location: ... Da' Swamp

Re: Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

Post by Grumpus »

Depending on the system it probably wouldn't hurt to do a system wide search as admin.
Good Luck.
Doesn't matter what you say, it's wrong for a toaster to walk around the house and talk to you
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therube
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Re: Can't remove "Yahoo seach engine"

Post by therube »

(For reference, Everything. It's great. Windows only.)
Fire 750, bring back 250.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball CopyURL+ FetchTextURL FlashGot NoScript
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