Firefox: Ask.com Hijack


When I tried out some software, I accidentally installed the Ask.com toolbar for Firefox. While the toolbar is easy to uninstall, there are some hidden settings which were also changed by the installer. For example, if I entered some words in the address bar and pressed enter, Firefox would redirect the page to Ask.com and show the search results. I found this quite annoying.

To restore the default settings, follow these steps:

  1. Enter about:config in the address bar and press enter. Click on I’ll be careful, I promise! to skip the warning.
  2. Enter Ask in the Filter box and press enter to filter the preferences.
  3. There are 4 preferences that were changed:
    browser.search.defaultenginename
    browser.search.order.1
    extensions.snipit.chromeURL
    keyword.URL
  4. Right click on each of the four preferences, and select Reset to reset them to default.
  5. Restart Firefox.

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