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AdwCleaner sets browser search engine and homepage to DuckDuckGo and Bing?


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I installed AdwCleaner 7 based on a post I saw here, then after reboot (it found some things) I noticed that my Chrome search engine was changed to DuckDuckGo and my Internet Explorer homepage was set to Bing.com

What is going on?

Even after uninstalling AdwCleaner and doing a Windows 7 System Restore to an earlier Windows Update, the settings were not restored.

Now I'm wondering what else it changed or installed, and if I can restore everything. I now don't trust Malwarebytes nor any anti-malware install, this is not good for business.

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Jerome,

AdwCleaner should not change the default search provider unless it is removing a malicious default. For example:

  • Do a default Chrome install then change the search provider to Yahoo.
  • Run AdwCleaner and clean the Ask and AOL providers.
  • Default search provider is changed to Google or DuckDuckGo depending on which version you are running.

In this situation, a legitimate search provider is selected as the default and it should not be changed just because malicious ones were removed. It would make sense to change it to Google if Ask or AOL were the default but otherwise it just appears to be surreptitiously changing valid user settings.

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  • Staff

Hello,

@capnkrunch It's actually the expected behaviour, I'm working with an issue regarding Chrome (and Firefox in a slighly different way) that may cause the settings to be changed more often that it should, but to be clear I do not change the settings when no malicious element is detected (at least that the expected behaviour as it has always been and as it will always be)

Edit: Sorry, I misunderstood your message. You're right and I'll see what I can do for it.

Edited by fr33tux
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