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I just had a horrible experience: I tried to download Firefox on a new install and got hijacked by Yahoo during the install!

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  • Last reply by philipp

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I have just had to set up one of computers again from scratch. After wiping the hard drive, setting up a new partition, formatting, and installing Windows, the first thing I did was try to download Firefox.

The site LOOKED legitimate. But it downloaded several nasty unwanted programs into my newly refreshed hard dive, and installed them without my permission. And Yahoo had hijacked everything -- including Internet Explorer.

I could not get rid of Yahoo, so simply went through the entire process again: wiped the hard drive, set u p a new partition, formatted it, reinstalled Windows. ANY amount of effort is better at this point hat fighting Yahoo for the rest of the duration of an install!

My question is: since nobody seems to WANT Yahoo, and it has become a virtual hijacker, anyway, is there any way to "immunize" an install of Firefox so Yahoo can NEVER install itself by stealth? A "never allow" feature or something?

It's bad enough that the new page tab has been ruined with clutter -- which I utterly hate -- but it no longer even displays the search machine. Is that something you did deliberately, or is THAT some kind of hijacker, too? Either way, it's quite awful If I wanted a lot of annoying clutter on a new tab, I'd be using Opera.

I have just had to set up one of computers again from scratch. After wiping the hard drive, setting up a new partition, formatting, and installing Windows, the first thing I did was try to download Firefox. The site LOOKED legitimate. But it downloaded several nasty unwanted programs into my newly refreshed hard dive, and installed them without my permission. And Yahoo had hijacked everything -- including Internet Explorer. I could not get rid of Yahoo, so simply went through the entire process again: wiped the hard drive, set u p a new partition, formatted it, reinstalled Windows. ANY amount of effort is better at this point hat fighting Yahoo for the rest of the duration of an install! My question is: since nobody seems to WANT Yahoo, and it has become a virtual hijacker, anyway, is there any way to "immunize" an install of Firefox so Yahoo can NEVER install itself by stealth? A "never allow" feature or something? It's bad enough that the new page tab has been ruined with clutter -- which I utterly hate -- but it no longer even displays the search machine. Is that something you did deliberately, or is THAT some kind of hijacker, too? Either way, it's quite awful If I wanted a lot of annoying clutter on a new tab, I'd be using Opera.

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hi Marianne_C, please only download firefox from its official location at https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ - it will never come with any unwanted bundled crap or toolbars there (and this advice also applies in general: go directly to a vendor's site in order to download any software!)

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