What is Searchy.online?
Searchy.online is another browser hijacker similar to threats like Searchengage.com and Search.gg. Same as its previous versions, the application is made to look similar to the popular search engine known as Google. For this reason, it may take you a while to notice this suspicious tool even though it may replace your start page and search engine with Searchy.online. What’s more, users should know the application might provide potentially harmful advertising from its third-party partners. In order to avoid such questionable content, we would recommend removing the browser hijacker from your browser. There are plenty of legitimate search engines like google.com, search.yahoo.com and more, so you should not take any chances with this suspicious tool. If you think you can deal with it manually, scroll at the end of the text and follow the provided steps.
Where does Searchy.online come from?
Searchy.online should travel with bundled installers of various unreliable browser add-ons. Thus, if the application appeared on the browser, it could have something to do with the recently added browser extension, although there is a possibility it could be bundled with other software as well. Provided you do not wish to encounter browser hijackers or other threats in the future, you should not just pay more attention to the programs you install or terms given on the setup wizard, but also at least consider acquiring a legitimate antimalware tool. It is rather handy when you have doubts about recently downloaded installers, documents, or other data since you can set it to scan the questionable file to determine whether the data is not malicious. Moreover, there might be times when you accidentally launch infected files without realizing it and at such times, the tool might be able to warn the user and stop the threat from harming the system or data on it.
How does Searchy.online work?
At the moment of writing Searchy.online works just on Google Chrome. Another thing our researchers at anti-Aspyware-101.com noticed is that the browser hijacker might have the ability to switch your default search engine and start page with itself. Accordingly, the user’s browser should load it with each browser’s launch or when you submit a search query. We believe the threat is designed to act this way not just to promote the search engine, but also make it possible for it to display third-party advertisements. It looks like such ads could be noticed among results provided by Searchy.online, although when you surf the Internet with it, the results might be shown by Yahoo, Yandex, Google, or other search engines.
What you should be aware of is that the browser hijacker might be able to inject the results with advertising even if another search engine provides it. We do not claim all of the displayed advertisements could be potentially harmful, but it is entirely possible some part of them could be, for example, the ads from the threat’s third-party partners might lead you to websites containing viruses, Trojans, or other malware. Of course, the ads could introduce you to other suspicious content as well, but unfortunately, we cannot tell exactly as the advertisements might be based on the country you live in.
How to remove Searchy.online?
In truth there are two ways to get rid of Searchy.online, so you can pick one that fits you best. Firstly, you could try eliminating it manually with the instructions provided at the end of the article. The other way to deal with the browser hijacker is to install a legitimate antimalware tool and perform a full system scan. All users have to do is initiate the scanning process, and the tool could locate those Google Chrome’s files that might have been affected by the search engine. Afterward, you would have a list of other potentially harmful applications or data located on the computer too. Therefore, you could clean the whole system and remove the threat while simply clicking the deletion button.
Erase Searchy.online from Google Chrome
- Open File Explorer (Win+E).
- Navigate to this provided location: C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
- Search for these given files: Preferences, Secure Preferences, and Web Data.
- Select the listed files one by one and press Shift+Delete.
- Exit the File Explorer.
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