Search@search.com

TidBITS Talk
1

All of a sudden this has taken over my link preferences, so instead of following a link, I get a page with this. It’s very annoying to have to repeatedly try to get to the requested link. Doing a google search, at least one site is calling this a virus and recommending a cleaner. I always hesitate to use any type of automatic ‘cleaning’ as it usually creates more problems than it resolves.
I’ve tried other suggestions on ways of gettng rid of it, but none keep it out of the system. Has anyone had experience with this that can say what works? I don’t mind paying for a solution, but I want it to work.

Lynda
iMac Retina 5K, 27"; 3.2 GHz i5

2

DO NOT DOWNLOAD THOSE CLEANERS!

Two well respected apps (from colleagues of mine) that specialize in such things:

Malwarebytes for Mac (free scanner after trial period of premium features)

https://www.malwarebytes.com

DetectX (free but soon to be unsupported) or DetectX Swift (free 20-day trial period):

https://sqwarq.com/detectx/compare-features/

After they clean things up, you will probably need to reset your home page and / or search engine preferences on all impacted browsers.

-Al-

3

I downloaded and ran DetectX Swift and ran it. It had some launcher items that I deleted, but after emptying trash and doing a restart, I still am getting the 'Search.Searchmanager" when I hit a link. I’ve looked thru the system launch items and see a “- 0 com.liveSearchLauncher” under User Launchd processes. Is this the culprit and if so, how do I get rid of it?

4

These are the two items deleted after the DetectX scan:
~/Library/LaunchAgetns/com.package.assistance.update.plist
~/Library/LaunchAgents.com.LiveSearchLauncher.plist

5

So these two replies are a bit contradictory. The “system launch item” com.liveSearchLauncher you found under User Launchd processes should be the second one you listed as having been deleted by DetectX “~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.LiveSearchLauncher.plist” although there are some small differences probably due to typing.

DetectX should not have had a problem deleting that one, but if you are still seeing it in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ then you should drag it to the trash and reboot.

I’ll just mention again that after that you will almost certainly have to reset at least the default search engine and perhaps your home page settings in the browser preferences.

If you let us know what browser you are using I can give you more specific information on how to do this.

-Al-

6

Thank you, Al. Malwarebytes got rid of that pesky search engine thingy.

7

I ended up downloading another malware app and finally got rid of darn thing. I downloaded Malwarebytes & Dr. Antivirus and one of them did the job.
Thanks

Lynda

8

Malwarebytes got rid of it for me. I think I will stay with Malwarebytes once the fee-be runs out.