Recently my oldish Mac laptop has acquired an unwanted search engine – anysearchmanager which seems to be a front for Yahoo. I certainly didn’t install it and I don’t want it but it resists all the normal ways of uninstalling. For instance my default search engine is still shown as Google but it isn’t, the new intruder doesn’t show up in applications or extensions so you can’t uninstall. There is a website registered in Israel which purports to give uninstall information but this doesn’t work.
I don’t think it’s malware but I would like to get rid of it so are there any Mac/safari geeks out there who could give me some advice?

is it within safari’s own extensions bit rather than the system?

what happens if you use another browser?

Looks like it installs itself under different names according to this:

https://www.pcrisk.com/removal-guides/11989-search-anysearchmanager-com-redirect-mac#a2

I wouldn’t necessarily install Combo Cleaner but the rest of the instructions on the page look sound.

Actually it’s a ‘browser hijacker’

https://malwaretips.com/blogs/remove-search-anysearchmanager-com/

the reason you’re not maybe finding good removal instructions is it won’t let you find them maybe. Try other browsers or even another machine to see how the search results compare on that front

edit – ah posted at the same time

Buy a Mac, they’re immune to malware, unlike those horrible Windows things.

So it installed itself without your input knowledge or permission? And you don’t want it? And it’s resisting ways to delete it? i think you have perfectly described malware.

Superficial

Member
So it installed itself without your input knowledge or permission? And you don’t want it? And it’s resisting ways to delete it? i think you have perfectly described malware.

Have you tried appcleaner?
Works v well for me
Good luck

Right, I installed the free Malware bytes which seems to have got rid of the Malware.
However I seem to have managed to disable Safari in the process. Every time I open a window I get the ‘server dropped connection’ message. I have clearly deleted something vital in my attempt to delate the Malware.
Any suggestions?

Install Chrome.

Don’t install Chrome. Try Firefox instead.

If you really want something Chrome-ish try a Chromium based browser such as Brave.

Don’t install Chrome.

My guess is that the software changed some proxy settings or something. I think there are proxy settings which are browser-specific.

Re-install Catalina.