GiffySocial Toolbar

As the name of the GiffySocial Toolbar suggests, this piece of software is all about GIFs (animated images). It promises to enable users to access and share free GIFs easily and without any restriction. The application does look quite useful, but there is one thing you need to know about it before you install it on your computer – it will hijack your New Tab page. To be more specific, a new page will be set as your New Tab URL, and it will be opened for you automatically when you launch your affected web browser. Some users do not want to see any random pages open on a browser startup, so they soon remove GiffySocial Toolbar from their computers completely to get rid of the page set. If you are one of them, you should know that it might not be enough to remove this piece of software from only one web browser – it could have affected all web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome, installed on the system. Luckily, it is far from a harmful malicious application, so you do not need to be an expert to delete GiffySocial Toolbar from your system. With our instructions (find them provided below this article), you will take care of it even quicker.

GiffySocial Toolbar sets a new page as a New Tab URL the first thing, so if you see a new page with a toolbar that contains such quick-access buttons as Upload Gifs, Create Gifs, and Create Memes set on your web browser, there is no doubt that you have installed it on your computer. The application is not dangerous, but we would still suggest that you uninstall it, especially if you have found it installed on your computer without your knowledge because it is not fully reliable. It is not serious malware for sure, but our researchers cannot call it fully trustworthy either – they have placed it under the potentially unwanted software category. What is more, we cannot confirm that this piece of software is extremely useful since it takes all GIFs from the popular website giphy.com, which you can, without a doubt, access yourself without difficulty. In other words, you do not need to have GiffySocial Toolbar installed to search for and share GIF images easily. Last but not least, we cannot trust the search tool whose service this piece of software uses. Theoretically, if you perform any web searches straight from the myway.com search box, you might even be presented with some modified search results. They are not considered to be dangerous, but they might redirect you to various untrustworthy websites on the web. You might not even know that you have ended up on an untrustworthy website, so, theoretically, problems might arise in no time.

What else you should know is that toolbars from the Mindspark family (developed by Mindspark Interactive Network, Inc.) collect information about users. Since GiffySocial Toolbar belongs to this category of browser plugins too, it is very likely that it will record some information about you as well. It mainly records technical details, including browser type, OS version, geographic location, etc., but we suspect that all you search queries and links you click will be recorded too if you actively use the search tool promoted by GiffySocial Toolbar.

As has been observed, toolbars released by Mindspark Interactive Network, Inc. are all distributed very similarly. That is, they have official websites they can be downloaded from by users. Speaking about GiffySocial Toolbar, users can download it from http://www.giffysocial.com/index.jhtml. Also, users might find advertisements promoting these toolbars on the web and install them with a single click. The same can be said about GiffySocial Toolbar. No matter how this piece of software has entered your computer, you should know that it acts as a potentially unwanted program in every instance. It means that it is not malicious but it definitely has several drawbacks and thus cannot be called a fully reliable application.

To remove the page set by GiffySocial Toolbar as your New Tab URL, you need to erase the browser plugin completely. Internet Explorer users can erase it through Control Panel, but if you use Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, your job will be to delete the browser extension representing GiffySocial Toolbar from these two web browsers. Our instructions will make the procedure easier, so feel free to use this guide.

GiffySocial Toolbar removal guide

Internet Explorer

Windows XP

1. Click Start.
2. Select Control Panel.
3. Click Add or Remove Programs.
4. Select GiffySocial Toolbar.
5. Click Remove.

Windows 7/Vista/8/8.1/10

1. Press Win+R, type Control Panel, and click OK.
2. Click Uninstall a program.
3. Select GiffySocial Toolbar.
4. Click Uninstall.

Mozilla Firefox

1. Launch Mozilla Firefox.
2. Type about:addons in the URL bar and press Enter.
3. Locate the GiffySocial extension and click Remove.

Google Chrome

1. Start Google Chrome.
2. Type chrome://extensions in the URL bar and press Enter.
3. Locate the extension named GiffySocial.
4. Click Remove next to it.