Splintersearch.com

Splintersearch.com is a search tool of a low-quality. It diminishes users’ browsing experience rather than improving it, proving again that users should never judge the appearance of a search tool from its interface. Actually, Splintersearch.com is not just an untrustworthy search tool. According to specialists at pcthreat.com, it is a typical browser hijacker because it changes the browser’s configuration without a user’s consent in most cases. This has already happened if Splintersearch.com is opened for you each time you launch your default browser. Even though keeping this search engine set on browsers should not cause any serious security problems, it is still not advisable to keep it set since it provides search results that differ from those shown by reputable search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo, and Bing) to a great extent. To be frank, these untrustworthy search results shown by Splintersearch.com might expose to potential threats, so getting rid of it and setting a reputable tool for searching the web should be your top priority now if you wish to perform safer web searches.

All browsers, including Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox will be affected by Splintersearch.com if a browser hijacker successfully infiltrates the computer. At first glance, it might seem that it does not differ at all from ordinary search tools, but the truth is that a handful of Yahoo! search results displayed by this search tool are replaced by the so-called sponsored search results. They are shown on the search results page of Splintersearch.com expecting that users will click on them. The more clicks on these sponsored search results, the more money the developer of Splintersearch.com receives. It is definitely not going to share this money with users even though they do the main job by visiting these promoted third-party websites. In most cases, they do not find any information associated with their search queries there. On top of that, they might find malicious software on these websites and allow it to enter their computers incidentally. You can protect your PC from dangers only by removing Splintersearch.com from all your browsers today.

The previous experience of our researchers shows that search tools that appear on browses without permission usually have another problem too – they usually collect information about users. Therefore, our researchers have decided to check the Privacy Policy of Splintersearch.com as well. The piece of information found there has revealed that this search tool focuses on the collection of non-personal information primarily. This information consists of technical information automatically transmitted by the device. On top of that, it is written there that this dubious search tool might retrieve and use information from social-networking sites, so you should not log into them if you have Splintersearch.com set on your browsers. It is the only way to make sure that it cannot get any personal information about you. Letting it collect this information might result in the violation of your privacy because there is no doubt that this search engine is going to share the recorded information with third parties too.

If a browser hijacker enters your PC and sets Splintersearch.com, you will not only see changes applied o to your browsers. Something else you can notice is the modified Start Page Value in the system registry (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main), the changed data inside the prefs.js file (%AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\.* {*-random numbers/symbols}) storing information about users’ preferences, and, finally, a new line could be detected in Preferences and Secure Preferences files (they are located in %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default) belonging to Google Chrome. The changes applied by a browser hijacker infection will no longer be visible on browsers installed on the computer only after the full deletion of this computer infection.

As you already know, you need to delete Splintersearch.com from browsers as soon as possible because it is not a trustworthy search tool, and it is definitely not going to improve your web searching experience. Unfortunately, it might be true that you will have to erase other untrustworthy applications from your PC next to Splintersearch.com too because, as has been found by our researchers, this dubious search tool comes with Snap.do (potentially unwanted program) and Combo search (a potentially unwanted extension). To delete all those untrustworthy applications all at once, specialists suggest scanning the computer with an automatic malware remover, such as SpyHunter.

Remove Splintersearch.com manually from browsers

Internet Explorer

1. Press Win+R.
2. Type regedit and click OK.
3. Move to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main .
4. Right-click on the Start Page Value and click Modify.
5. Enter the website you like (e.g. www.google.com) in the Value data field.
6. Click OK.

Mozilla Firefox

1. Open the Windows Explorer.
2. Open %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\.* {*- a user’s ID consisting of several characters/numbers).
3. Open the prefs.js file using Notepad.
4. Locate the line user_pref("browser.startup.homepage", "http://splintersearch.com" .
5. Change "http://splintersearch.com" to your preferred website.
6. Save the changes.

Google Chrome

1. Open the Windows Explorer.
2. Go to %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default (type in the URL bar at the top and press Enter).
3. Locate Preferences and Secure Preferences files.
4. Open them one after the other and delete splintersearch.com lines from them.
5. Save the changes.