Toolbars = BAD!

Welcome to PC Tech for Hire, Montgomery Alabama's professional residential and small business computer repair and service provider.

When it comes to your browser, toolbars are almost always a bad idea. Sometimes you just open your web browser for the day and there they are--and no idea where they came from. They are often snuck in with other software installations, updates, or via a malware/spyware attack. Some toolbars are just annoying and take up room in your browser. Others do that AND facilitate browser hijacks that compromise your whole system’s security. How can you tell if a toolbar is bad? Well, I don’t think ANY toolbars are necessarily good (or even useful)--but if you’re seeing websites and search engines get redirected, that definitely needs to be fixed.
​
The reason it needs to be dealt with is that sometimes this is just the foot in the door to enable even worse malware to cause more problems in your computer later. Also, if it’s forcing you to use a search engine other than Google, you’re not going to get very good search results. In fact, a recent web report by Sophos revealed that Bing (Microsoft’s search engine) has twice as many “poisoned links” in their results as Google. ("Poisoned" links are links that will give your computer malware—i.e., search for one thing and get another!). This is another reason I recommend Google for search instead of Bing.