In some cases, the resulting page is a legitimate search engine such as Bing or Yahoo, but it’s there just for show. The logic is as follows: a piece of dubious code specifies a rogue page as the victim’s default search provider, and each redirect instance resolves a few ad resources en route to a phony information lookup service. These shenanigans are typically laced with sketchy browser extensions and a network of low-quality advertising networks.

The default search engine tends to be a focal point of threat actors – if misconfigured, it allows them to generate fraudulent web traffic to junk pages. Mac adware authors mostly boil their shady practices down to tweaking these settings without permission. The homepage, default search engine, and new tab page are the trio of shortcuts making it so much easier to surf the Internet. Web browsing defaults really make a difference because they allow users to align their online activities with personal preferences. Here’s how to remove a default search engine from web browsers on Mac if it’s put into effect by malware to give the Internet preferences an overhaul.