Safe Browsing Search Redirect - How to remove

Safe Browsing is a browser extension that offers safer, quick, no-tracking internet search. Really, though, it just causes Yahoo and Myprivatesearch redirects. Besides, people complain about Safe Browsing infiltrating their browser without their permission. And why would they install it themselves? Safe Browsing is inconvenient to use and it forcibly redirects your search queries by changing your default search engine with no option to change search preferences – besides uninstalling Safe Browsing, of course.

In short about Safe Browsing:

Type of threat	Browser hijacker, adware.
How Safe Browsing affects the browser	Changes the search engine – opens Yahoo and Myprivatesearch.
How hijackers get installed	Bundled with free programs, included with other browser extensions, advertised online, usually dishonestly and aggressively.
How to remove Safe Browsing	Uninstall unwanted extensions, check your device for suspicious programs (with Spyhunter for PC, Combo Cleaner for Mac, others).

Is Safe Browsing safe?

How it works

Safe Browsing’s functionality is laughable – to get private search, you have to start the search query with typing ‘p’ in the address bar. That invokes the private/secure search. It does this by sending your query to Myprivatesearch.com. While this search engine does promise to not track you, it is severely lacking features (such as filtering). Also, its image, video, and news results just open Yahoo, which makes no promises to protect your privacy.

Oh, and if you just search normally, the results are returned in Yahoo.com.

So, overall, Safe Browsing is just another Yahoo-promoting browser hijacker that limits your ability to control your web browser.

Bad associations

When Safe Browsing is being installed (for example, from the Chrome Web Store), a warning is displayed about the required permissions. Safe Browsing only wants one thing: to change your search settings to Mps.eanswers.com.

We’ve already written about Eanswers before. There’s Movie.eanswers.com and Games.eanswers.com that each are associated with a bunch of search-hijacking browser extensions. Mps.eanswers.com is another subset – they are browser extensions that offer private web search. Their names are securePrivacy, privateNet, Safe Browser, etc. Each of them has thousands of users (Safe Browsing has over 60,000) and each one hijacks the users’ searches. It’s one huge browser hijacking effort.

Safe Browsing is by Bettersearchtools.com, a site that’s responsible betterGames Now, betterSportTV Now, and a bunch of other browser add-ons. They’ve been active for years. Even though the traffic to Mps.eanswers.com has fallen significantly in the last few months, the hijackers remain active, some of them updated at the beginning of this month. It seems like they continue to be active.

How it gets installed

Dishonest, manipulative ads promote these browser extensions and trick people into installing them. People say as much in the reviews of the extensions. Safe Browsing’s reviews accuse it of installing by itself. And that’s by people who caught it. Once installed, Safe Browsing is quite invisible, so it’s easily missed. Unwitting users of Safe Browsing might just think “oh, my browser now searches on Yahoo, how strange”.

Considering how many users Safe Browsing has, the number of reviews is way too low, which is another symptom of dishonest installation. For example:

• Maybe the Safe Browsing add-ons arrived bundled with some other program and the person whose browser was hijacked just assumed that it was normal for their default search engine to change randomly.
• Or maybe multiple browser hijackers were installed at once and the safe browsing add-on was overwritten by another app. It’s still installed, but even less visible.
• Dishonest ads, such as ones that open a new tab on Gsafe.getawesome4.com and demand that you add Safe Browsing if you want to continue using the website that you were on.

Don’t ever install browser extensions without checking their reputation first. And if you did get one installed without meaning to, then you know that you can’t trust it. Not because Safe Browsing is malicious or anything, but just because it’s disrespectful and unhelpful.

Alternatives

Safe Browsing replaces your search engine settings. The search engine is the site that your browser sends internet search queries by default. Some of them do collect data about you (you can actually download and manage all the data that Google has collected on you – it’s pretty interesting). So, private search engines started popping up, promising people to respect their privacy.

Scammers jumped on the train, too. It’s not so easy to check if a random website really is tracking your data. So, some malicious sites claim to be privacy-focused search engines while being some of the worst adware out there.

There are reputable and respected privacy sites, with the most famous one being Duckduckgo.com. It, unlike the site promoted by Safe Browsing, actually has features, such as searching by time, location, etc.

And you can use private search engines by simply changing your browser preferences (instructions at the bottom) and without the need to install any browser extensions. Extensions can access your browser and have an effect on your privacy. Safe Browsing can redirect you to whatever site it wants. It can open ads instead of search results if it wants to.

How to remove Safe Browsing

Uninstall Safe Browsing by going into the settings, clicking on”Extensions”, finding Safe Browsing (or one of its clones), and removing it.

It’s also advisable to check what other extensions you have, as well as what programs and apps are installed on your computer. Especially what was installed at the same time as Safe Browsing. You can check for potentially unwanted programs by scanning your device with an anti-malware app (like Spyhunter for Windows, Combo Cleaner for macOS, etc.).

Automatic Malware removal tools

Restore browser settings

TopHow To remove Safe Browsing Search Redirect from Google Chrome:

• Click on the 3 horizontal lines icon on a browser toolbar and Select More Tools→Extensions
  
• Select all malicious extensions and delete them.
  
• Click on the 3 horizontal lines icon on a browser toolbar and Select Settings
  
• Select Manage Search engines
  
• Remove unnecessary search engines from the list
  
• Go back to settings. On Startup choose Open blank page (you can remove undesired pages from the set pages link too).
• If your homepage was changed, click on Chrome menu on the top right corner, select Settings. Select Open a specific page or set of pages and click on Set pages.
  
• Delete malicious search websites at a new Startup pages window by clicking “X” next to them.
  

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings

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

• Click on a Chrome’s menu button (three horizontal lines) and select Settings.
• Scroll to the end of the page and click on theReset browser 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.

How to remove Safe Browsing Search Redirect from Microsoft Edge:Top

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

• Select all malicious extensions and delete them.

• Click on the three-dot menu on the browser toolbar and Select Settings

• Select Privacy and Services and scroll down. Press on Address bar.

• Choose Manage search engines.

• Remove unnecessary search engines from the list: open the three-dot menu and choose Remove.

• Go back to Settings. Open On start-up.
• Delete malicious search websites at Open specific page or pages by opening the three-dot menu and clicking Delete.

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

• Click on Edge's menu button and select Settings. Click on the Reset Settings button on the left.
• Press the Restore settings to their default values option.

• 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.

How To remove Safe Browsing Search Redirect from Firefox:Top

• 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 Safe Browsing Search Redirect 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.
  
• If your homepage was changed, click on the Firefox menu in the top right corner, select Options → General. Enter a preferable URL to the homepage field and click Restore to Default.
  

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings If you are still experiencing any issues related to Safe Browsing Search Redirect, 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.
  
• ChooseTroubleshooting Information on the Help menu.
  
• Click on theReset Firefox button.
  
• Click on the Reset Firefox button on the confirmation box. Mozilla Firefox will close and change the settings to default.
  

If the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program to identify malicious entries.