AtoZManuals Toolbar

Posted by Sarah Stewart on September 26, 2017

What is AtoZManuals Toolbar?

AtoZManuals Toolbar is a browser extension that, supposedly, offers you access to thousands of PDF manuals to various gadgets, and software. While it may provide you with the manuals, you should also know that it will replace your browser’s homepage with its promoted search engine. Furthermore, both this extension and that search engine will collect information about you and show commercial advertisements. While ads are not a problem by themselves, we are concerned that some of them can be malicious and potentially jeopardize your computer’s security. Therefore, we recommend that you remove this application from your PC/browser as soon as possible. test test

Where does AtoZManuals Toolbar come from?

According to our cybersecurity experts, AtoZManuals Toolbar was created by the infamous Mindspark Interactive. This company has been releasing questionable toolbars for years and this particular toolbar is its newest release. Like all Mindspark Interactive toolbars, AtoZManuals Toolbar has a dedicated promotional and distribution website at Atozmanuals.com/index.jhtml from which you can download this application for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Internet Explorer. However, that is not the only distribution channel used. According to our cybersecurity experts, you can get this extension on your own accord from the Chrome Web Store, if you use Chrome. Furthermore, there is a third distribution channel that makes this program as unreliable as it is because it involves bundled software installers on freeware websites that can inject this extension into your browser secretly which is a malicious action.

What does AtoZManuals Toolbar do?

If you get AtoZManuals Toolbar onto your browser, then it will change your browser’s homepage address to Search.myway.com, a search engine that is also owned by Mindspark Interactive but uses Google to present you with search results, so it is no better than the best search engine of our time, so why use it? The fact of the matter is that Mindspark Interactive is in the web monetization business. It wants to generate web traffic to Search.myway.com via toolbars such as AtoZManuals Toolbar. That search engine was designed to show commercial advertisements in its search results, and the extension also plays a part in showing you the ads.

The privacy policy of Search.myway.com outlines the information collected about you. The policy states that the automatically collected information can include “IP address, your browser type and language and other browser-related information, a time-stamp, the keyword query, search query text, search results clicked, pages viewed, search history, the content of any of our undeleted cookies, including a unique identifier.” This information is obtained using information collection technologies such as browser cookies and web beacons. The collection of this information is not incidental as it is used for customizing and personalizing the ad campaign to present you with interesting promotional links that will generate ad revenue if you click them. However, since some of the shown links can redirect you to unreliable and malicious websites, we recommend that you remove AtoZManuals Toolbar from your browser.

How do I remove AtoZManuals Toolbar?

As you can see, AtoZManuals Toolbar only appears as a legitimate and useful application, but its real purpose is to promote third-party content via its featured search engine. If you want to delete it, then you have to go to Control Panel to uninstall it from Microsoft Internet Explorer. If you use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, then you have to remove this extension from the add-ons manager.