A reader has a question about a browser hijacker.
“Please tell us about s.yimg and how to get rid of it. What I have learned so far is that it is potentially unwanted malware from Yahoo. It is confusing. Once it’s gone does it re-install itself? Yahoo is the e-mail program I use. Thank you. My OS is Windows 10/64.”
This browser hijacker is certainly an annoying piece of adware. However, it is not in any way connected with Yahoo. What this tricky program does is impersonate redirect your search engine of choice, whether it be Yahoo, Bing, or Google to their own page. Instead of searching from Google.com or Yahoo.com, your searches will be redirected to their website.
It usually gets onto your PC by getting a piggyback ride on a legitimate download of freeware or by placing an ad on a page that misleads you into clicking on it. If you’re using Yahoo search, you might see a redirect like this:
Here’s the actual address of the site, it will take you to.
It’s possible that a good program like Malware Bytes can find and remove this hijacker. But if it doesn’t, you’ll need to remove it manually. Start by typing Add or remove programs in the search box and clicking on the results.
Click on Apps and features to see all of your installed programs.
You can then start searching for the hijacker by browsing installed apps. I’d suggest sorting by date installed, since you’ll probably notice the issue right after the program takes over.
Once you find the unwanted program, click on it and choose Uninstall.
This program won’t reinstall unless you click on it again. But there is an important step you can take to prevent accidental installations. Click here to learn how.
Now that we’ve removed the unwanted program, we still have quite a bit of work to do. Because there may be add-ons installed to your browser and you must reset your home page and preferred search engine. Yikes! We’ll look at how to handle that in the most popular browsers in a series of articles this week.
Cyn, You saved me, again. This AM I clicked on ‘Get’ – Yahoo as Home Page. It had been popping up on my screen for awhile and as I am in dilemma re IE, I clicked on the ‘Get’ for getting Yahoo.com as your home page. When I went down to the bottom of the page to ‘Save’ etc, I noticed the download was from s.yimg.com. I immediately cancelled, closed the page and ran a Malwarebytes scan. It found and quarantined two threats. While in the background Windows Defender ran and found no threats. See how great and timely your info is for us. See how important your info to us is, and how much we need it and mostly how much we appreciate that you are there for us and stay on top of the bad things that are happening around us. A big grateful thankful, Trish