[StartPageSearch]

Hi nitrogen. They may have also experienced the reported DuckDuckGo Browser Hijacker see: https://duck.co/forum/thread/24346/what-is-the-duckduckgo-br.... Both are viruses that have nothing to do with the legitimate search engines.

Hope this helps!

[jameskegel]

I wonder why someone feel incentivised to do this. Can you offer any insight as to why someone unrelated to your org would design malware that switched the default search to your site?

[sanswork]

I use to work in search advertising and we've had people do this to our sites too. The malware doesn't just change the default search it also replaces the ads on our pages in your browser with their own ones. So they get the money and we get the spam and malware complaints.

[StartPageSearch]

There are good hackers that will likely save our world from disaster.

Then there are bad hackers out there with various motives, often monetary. Some of them make a living or get a thrill by propagating viruses.

You will notice there are companies selling software to remove viruses, like the supposed DuckDuckGo virus, for example: http://www.2-spyware.com/remove-duckduckgo.html

There are virus creators out there that take the names of legitimate companies like DuckDuckGo and StartPage, likely to trick people for their own reasons.

Let me emphasize again that DuckDuckGo and StartPage are legitimate search engines, and the reported viruses that try to benefit from respected industry names like these have nothing to do with the legitimate search services.

[sametmax]

I never seen any malware installing ddg as the default page, but I've seen many installing startpage. Also commercial softwares with default checkbox. I cleaned one just some days ago on my girl's laptop.

Sorry, I have no way to know if you are a victim or a bad actor in the matter, but I choose to ban you from anything I touch. And I know every geeks around me do the same.

If you are indeed a victim, I'm sorry for you and hope you'll find a way to get your legitimacy back. Right now it's very bad.