Movie Browsing hijacker - How to remove

A browser extension, a search tool that claims to be “The easy and fun way to watch trailers, explore popular movies and TV shows” and invites people to “enjoy the largest database for movie trailers, tv series and celebrity content all in one place”.

Movie Browsing changes the browser’s home page and search results, and injects advertisements into them. This leads to it being classified a hijacker. The primary goal of the distributors of these extensions is to earn money from advertising to their users.

Is Movie Browsing risky to use?

Here are the permissions that this extension requires:

Add “Movie Browsing”?

It can:

Read and change all your data on the websites you visit

Display notifications

Communicate with cooperating websites

Change your search settings to: movie.searchmedia.online

It seems like Movie Browsing might prioritise displaying more ads to its users over their privacy and a pleasant browsing experience. They could be collecting people’s search history to serve them better-targeted ads, or sell their data to third parties.

An extension itself is not a virus, but in theory,  it could lead to infections. Especially an extension like Movie Browsing that relies on advertising to earn money. Not all advertising networks care about their ads being secure. If you allow low-reputation browser hijackers to inject new ads into your websites, like MovieBrowser seems to be able to do, you could start seeing loud, intrusive ads on sites that shouldn’t have them. Even worse, some ads seek to spread malware. Some pretend to be download buttons, some lead to phishing sites that are trying to steal people’s personal information (like passwords and bank details), or shady download sites that promote potentially unwanted programs that might include spyware or other malware.

Movie Browsing changes your search engine to Yahoo, and, when you search for anything in its extension search box, takes you to gomovix.com. It also displays ads in the search engine results (one at the top and three at the bottom). That’s more ads than without the extension. At least for me, the normal Yahoo search without the extension only displayed two ads.

So it does not seem like the Movie Browsing extension offers an experience in any way superior to traditional, hijacker-free browsing.

Movie Browsing has an interesting user agreement. It explicitly does not guarantee that their product is free from “viruses”, “trojan horses”, or harmful properties. This is unusual, to state these things so clearly. Mostly the user agreement is only meant to protect the software developer/distributor from frivolous lawsuits, but normal software licensing agreements don’t normally talk about viruses…

WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, NEITHER LICENSOR NOR ANY OF ITS AFFILIATES, NOR ANY OF THEIR OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, LICENSORS, EMPLOYEES OR REPRESENTATIVES REPRESENT OR WARRANT (i) THAT THE PRODUCT, INCLUDING ITS CONTENT, WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS OR BE ACCURATE, COMPLETE, RELIABLE, OR ERROR-FREE; (ii) THAT THE PRODUCT WILL ALWAYS BE AVAILABLE OR WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ACCESSIBLE, TIMELY, OR SECURE; (iii) THAT ANY DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED, OR THAT THE PRODUCT WILL BE FREE FROM VIRUSES, “WORMS,” “TROJAN HORSES” OR HARMFUL PROPERTIES; (iv) THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, TIMELINESS, OR COMPLETENESS OF ANY REVIEW, RECOMMENDATION, OR OTHER MATERIAL PUBLISHED OR ACCESSIBLE ON OR THROUGH THE PRODUCT; (v) ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR USAGE OF TRADE; AND (vi) THAT THE PRODUCT IS NONINFRINGING.

A Trojan Horse is malware that pretends to be legitimate and trustworthy software or files. It tricks the user into installing it themselves. It can arrive as an attachment to an email, or by being bundled with free software.

The Trojan can be carrying something annoying but not very destructive, like adware — unwanted software that will continuously inject intrusive advertisements into a user’s browser. Or it could infect a computer with something dangerous like encrypting ransomware that practically destroys personal files and asks for a ransom to give the files back.

This does not mean that Movie Browsing is itself a Trojan, or that it will infect your computer with anything. But it is suspicious that they needed to mention that their product is not guaranteed to be clean of viruses.

What is Movie Browsing?

Movie Browsing is just one of a large family of redundant browser extensions. There have been many of them created:

• myMovies Start
• Search By myMovie
• goMovix
• goMovix Start
• Search By goMovix
• MovixHub

They often share the same description as Movie Browsing, the same developers, and are associated with the same websites:

• movie.searchmedia.online
• getmedia.today
• getmedia.online
• gomovix.com
• gsafe.getawesome3.com
• GlobalAppz
• myAppline

This seems to indicate that these extensions are being produced in bulk without much (if any) effort being put into their quality. We do not believe that Movie Browsing has its users’ best interests in mind.

How to remove Movie Browsing?

Movie Browsing is just a browser extension and can be removed easily. But we do recommend that if you had Movie Browsing or some similar extension installed, you tighten your computer security. Scan your fils with a well-known and reputable antivirus program (we usually recommend Spyhunter, Combo-Cleaner, malwarebytes, but you should go ahead and do your own research!) and remove malware if any is found. And always be aware of malicious ads when browsing the web.

Automatic Malware removal tools

How to remove Movie Browsing hijacker using Windows Control Panel

Many hijackers and adware like Movie Browsing hijacker install some of their components as regular Windows programs as well as additional software. This part of malware can be uninstalled from the Control Panel. To access it, do the following.

• Start→Control Panel (older Windows) or press Windows Key→Search and enter Control Panel and then press Enter (Windows 8, Windows 10).
• Choose Uninstall Program (if you don't see it, click in the upper right next to "View by" and select Category).
• Go through the list of programs and select entries related to Movie Browsing hijacker . You can click on "Name" or "Installed On" to reorder your programs and make Movie Browsing hijacker easier to find.
• Click the Uninstall button. If you're asked if you really want to remove the program, click Yes.
• In many cases anti-malware programs are better at detecting related parasites, thus I recommend installing Spyhunter to identify other programs that might be a part of this infection.

How to remove Movie Browsing hijacker from macOS

Delete Movie Browsing hijacker from your applications.

1. Open Finder.
2. In the menu bar, click Go.
3. Select Applications from the dropdown.
4. Find the Movie Browsing hijacker app.
5. Select it and right-click it (or hold the Ctrl and click the left mouse button).
6. In the dropdown, click Move to Bin/Trash. You might be asked to provide your login password.

TopRemove malicious extensions from Internet Explorer

• Press on the Gear icon→Manage Add-ons.
  
• Go through Toolbars and extensions. Remove everything related to Movie Browsing hijacker and items you do not know that are made not by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle or Adobe.
  
• Close the Options.

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings

If you are still experiencing any issues related to Movie Browsing hijacker, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Press on the Gear icon->Internet Options.
  
• Choose the Advanced tab and click on the Reset button.
  
• Select a “Delete personal settings” checkbox and click on the Reset button.
  
• Click on the Close button on the confirmation box, then close your browser.
  

If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.

TopRemoving Movie Browsing hijacker from Chrome

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Google Chrome window. Select “Settings”.
  
• Click “Extensions” on the left menu bar.
• Go through the extensions list and remove programs you do not need, especially similar to Movie Browsing hijacker. Click on the trash bin icon next to Movie Browsing hijacker or other add-ons you want to remove.
  
• Press on the “Remove” button on the Confirmation window.
  
• If unsure, you can disable them temporarily.
  
• Restart Chrome.

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings

If you are still experiencing any issues related to Movie Browsing hijacker, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Click on Chrome’s menu button (three horizontal lines) and select Settings.
  
• Scroll to the end of the page and click on the Reset settings button.
  
• Click on the Reset button on the confirmation box.
  

If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.

TopRemoving Movie Browsing hijacker from Firefox

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Mozilla window and select the “Add-ons” icon (or press Ctrl+Shift+A on your keyboard).
  
• Go through Extensions and Addons list, remove everything Movie Browsing hijacker related and items you do not recognise. If you do not know the extension and it is not made by Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, Oracle or Adobe then you probably do not need it.
  

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings If you are still experiencing any issues related to Movie Browsing hijacker, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Mozilla Firefox window. Click on the Help button.
  
• Choose Troubleshooting Information on the Help menu.
  
• Click on the Reset Firefox button.
  
• Click on the Reset Firefox button on the confirmation box. Mozilla Firefox will close and change the settings to default.
  

If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.

How to remove Movie Browsing hijacker from Microsoft Edge:Top

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Microsoft Edge window. Select “Extensions”.

• Go through the extensions list and remove programs you do not need, especially similar to Movie Browsing hijacker. Click on the "Remove" icon next to Movie Browsing hijacker or other add-ons you want to remove.

• Press on the “Remove” button on the Confirmation window.

• If unsure, you can disable them temporarily.

• Restart Microsoft Edge.

TopRemoving Movie Browsing hijacker from Safari (Mac OS X)

• Click on the Safari menu.
• Choose Preferences.
  
• Click on the Extensions Tab.
• Click on the Uninstall button near the Movie Browsing hijacker. Remove all other unknown or suspicious entries too. If you are not sure whether you need the extension or not, you can simply uncheck the Enable check-box to disable the extension temporarily.
  
• Restart Safari.

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings

If you are still experiencing any issues related to Movie Browsing hijacker, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Click on the Safari menu on the top left corner of the screen. Select Reset Safari.
  
• Select which options you want to reset (usually all of them come preselected) and click on the Reset button.
  

If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.