Crawler.com hijacked my browser
After installing an app last weekend I’ve had Crawler.com hijack my browser to be my default search engine. I didn’t tell Crawler.com to do that so I’m pretty pissed off with them and every attempt to uninstall the damned search engine has failed.
The hijack doesn’t appear to have had a massive effect on boosting their brand awareness except, in my case, in a very negative way. I know Alexa isn’t the perfect guage of site usage, but a quick squint at the traffic details for crawler.com shows that their rank and page views have increased but that their reach has gone down. It should all be going down for their cynical installation strategy.
So how do you remove Crawler.com from Firefox?
Well, after a quick search on the web, using Google.co.uk, I found that in Firefox you need to do the following:
In the address bar enter about:config
Look for the following entries as these were the ones that had been hijacked on my Firefox:
browser.search.defaultenginename
browser.search.order.1
My entries here were Crawler Search so I changed them to Google.co.uk
Bugger! That didn’t work. What was I missing? I searched through the settings and figured that all the ones in BOLD were user defined, so I ran through just those one s and found:
keyword.URL
THIS was the last setting to still have Crawler in it, so I right-clicked the entry and selected the last option: RESET.
That cured my Crawler hijack problem. Good riddance.
Great, finally got rid of that pest.
Tried your idea, but the “reset” is greyed out on “keyword URL”.
Still getting diverted when searching through web page listings in Firefox. Sooner, or later, I am going into my registry, and deleting everything with “people crawler” mentioned.
I worked for me. Spyware doctor or all anti-malware couldn’t remove them.
Thanks a lot pal. Those crawler assholes should die from a suffering death.
Got rid of it at last
Awesome fix! My Dad’s browser got hijacked and this was the fastest fix ever. How are they able to get into those settings and change them?
Thank you so much for your help.
I am a web designer and WordPress Expert, but I am always fixing my clients computers on the side, and I feel sorry for people. It is impossible to keep this crap off your computer these days.
Glad that was of use to you, Linda Lee. Basically, by installing an app/toolbar you’re giving permission to the plugin to hook into your browser and, by doing so, it has to access and change the config – that’s normal practice so that the plugin and browser can work harmoniously.
Crawler, however, has been built in such a way that it is so incredibly difficult to remove, as so many people have found to their dismay.
I also do a little PC fixing once in a while and it never ceases to amaze me just how many apps people have installed on their machines – they have toolbars with so many icons on display that it usually takes a good 10 minutes for their machines to fully boot up. Then there’s the drain on resources – RAM & CPU cycles. I don’t keep apps on my PC unless absolutely necessary and, even then, I’ll often use the task manager to shut down apps that are unnecessary to the daily schedule
Thanks so much for walking me through that, i am not a computer expert but i was very glad your instructions were simple and clear.
No problem, Nikki, glad that was of use to you