MySearchDial Is An Insidious App And How To Remove It

When all is said and done, well, you need to be pretty careful when you install free software these days.  When you install something, I've noticed a trend that the very first approval screens have nothing to do with the app you want to install, but rather, with add-ons packaged with the download.

Companies have to make their money somehow, and offering up partnerships to shady software is one of them.  I just caught this from Mozilla's FilZilla and in the past, have noted it when downloading Abobe (of all companies) software.

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The other day I downloaded FileZilla and installed it.  In the process of installation, I was caught off guard when I said yes to something that I was under the belief was something FileZilla related, but was in fact, saying yes to installing this piece of shit add-on, MySearchDial.

Make no mistake, I am calling MySearchDial an insidious piece of shit application that has installed itself into EVERY SINGLE web browswer in my system.

Unlike legitimate software, where once you uninstall it, it goes away, MySearchDial left as much of itself behind everywhere as it could.

It's called MALWARE by many sites and now I see why.  When it first showed up, I thought I had uninstalled it.  But apparently not.

The first thing it did was change ALL of my web browsers homepagesto itself. It then changed ALL my default search providers in my browsers to itself and inserted itself as an add-on to my web browsers.

It initially was an easy enough fix, but when I uninstalled it from my system, that DID NOT return my web browswers to their state prior to this PoS add-on.

As noted under Malwaretips.com, always opt for custom installation and deselect things you do not need.  Now I know.  (It's like when you install Adobe products and you're offered to install a McAfee product.  Which by the way, does do scans, but then tells you it's found something and you have to buy it to fix it.  Bzzzz.  Fail.  I'm not sure why Adobe associates itself with them still.)


Per the great advice from Malware Tips, I was able to get rid of the evil application, and remove it from my browsers, but it still resided as my default search engine.  Seriously?  This is not how you win over users.


What???

Removing MySearchDial from FireFox,

I hit up the FireFox button in the upper left, selected Add-ons, and removed all references to MySearchDial and anything that i did nto think was something I added or needed.

A quick restart fixed that.

Then today, I found I had to reset my default search engine.

To do that, (I can't believe I missed this, but I was so aggravated...) in the upper right corner, there's the search window.  Click the icon and you will be able to select Google or what have you from there.

To get rid of that PoS from the search engine list, (I could not find any other way to do this), I installed FireFox SearchReset and then I saw an option at the bottom of my search engine list and there, I could remove any nefarious options left there.

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Removing MySearchDial from Chrome:

I hit up the Chrome Menu button in the upper right, selected Tools, then Extensions.

In that menu, I smite all evil software apps by thumping that trash can off to the right. Goodbye brown invader.

But it's still in my "right click" search options menu.

Grr.

I went back to the Chrome menu button, clicked on Settings, found Manage Search Engines.  Then I made Google (or your favorite) the default, and clicked on the 'X' to the right of anything I did not want to keep around.

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And that concluded my complete waste of time today dealing with cheap numbers tactics by what some call malware installations.

Resources: Malware Tips, SearchEngine Journal.

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