Remove ANY TOOLBAR from Internet
Explorer, Firefox and Chrome
Browser toolbars have been around for years, however, in the last couple of months they became
a huge mess. Unfortunately, lots of free software comes with more or less unwanted add-ons or
browser toolbars.
These are quite annoying because they may:
Change your homepage and your search engine without your permission or awareness
Track your browsing activities and searches
Display annoying ads and manipulate search results
Take up a lot of (vertical) space inside the browser
Slow down your browser and degrade your browsing experience
Fight against each other and make normal add-on handling difficult or impossible
Become difficult or even impossible for the average user to fully uninstall
Toolbars are not technically not a virus, but they do exhibit plenty of malicious traits, such as
rootkit capabilities to hook deep into the operating system, browser hijacking, and in general just
interfering with the user experience. The industry generally refers to it as a “PUP,” or potentially
unwanted program.
Generally speaking, toolbars are ad-supported (users may see additional banner, search, pop-up,
pop-under, interstitial and in-text link advertisements) cross web browser plugin for Internet
Explorer, Firefox and Chrome, and distributed through various monetization platforms during
installation. Very often users have no idea where did it come from, so it’s not surprising at all
that most of them assume that the installed toolbar is a virus.
For example, when you install iLivid Media Player, you will also agree to change your browser
homepage to search.conduit.com, set your default search engine to Conduit Search, and install
the AVG Search-Results Toolbar.
However when you uninstall iLivid Media Player from your computer, your web browser’s
default settings will not be restored. This means that you’ll have to remove search.conduit.com
and from your favorite web browser manually.
The most common toolbar infections that can be found on the Internet are:
Ask.com Toolbar
Yahoo! Toolbar
Mail.ru toolbar