StudyHQ Toolbar Removal Guide

The beginning of the school year is just around the corner and our friendly neighborhood malware developer Mindspark is obliged to roll out its newest bad toolbar called StudyHQ Toolbar. Removing this application is something you ought to do, provided that you have already installed it. Like all Mindspark programs (of which there are many) StudyHQ Toolbar masquerades as a useful application that provides you with bookmarks and links to websites that relate to a specifically themed toolbar. However, it would be smarter to make our own bookmarks to websites that you want, instead of using something that is not useful but is forced on you by a malware developer.

Mindspark is widely criticized for its malicious toolbars, because their usefulness if highly doubtful. In the case of StudyHQ Toolbar it features numerous links to the subpages of Gostudyhq.com. The website looks like something that a child would find useful. However, we doubt that kids go around looking for a toolbar that would help them learn something. Note that this website is also owned by this program’s developer, so knowing how much effort it puts into its fake little websites, we can say that it is nothing short of useless. One of StudyHQ Toolbar’s bookmarks redirects to Apstudent.collegeboard.org and another bookmark redirects to Translate.reference.com. Oddly enough these two are the only links to third-party websites, because, most of the time, Mindspark stuffs a lot more.

StudyHQ Toolbar comes bundled with a custom search engine that you can also install while you are installing the toolbar itself. This search engine is also featured on other malicious toolbars, such as InternetSpeedUtility Toolbar, 100sOfRecipes Toolbar, SMSFromBrowser Toolbar, and others. This suspicious search engine is also owned by the developer of StudyHQ Toolbar. This search engine is known to gather information about you, such as IP address of your computer, unique mobile device identifier, technical information about your computer, search queries, mis-formatted DNS entries, search results selected, clicks, pages viewed, search history, comments. As you can see it can have a whole file on you, especially if you, for some unknown reason, contact the developer and provide them with your email address, name, last name, and so on.

Allegedly, this information will be used to provide better services. But we are more concerned with the fact that it can share this information with its affiliated advertising partners, because it is possible that its search engine will include third-party links, promotions and ads in its search results. So everything about this application spells trouble, because the ads can be misleading. It is clear that advertisers who use StudyHQ Toolbar search engine as an advertising outlet are small-time and can only dream about being promoted by Google.

If you do not know how to remove this bad toolbar then we recommend that you follow the removal guide that we have prepared just in case some of you are not familiar with a particular browser or operating system. StudyHQ Toolbar is not very dangerous, but it is just plain useless. Toolbars, such as this one only take up valuable screen space. Above all you should not tolerate its privacy violations and annoying ads.

How to get rid of StudyHQ Toolbar

Windows 8 & 8.1

1. Right-click on the Start Screen button.
2. Go to Programs and Features.
3. Locate StudyHQ Toolbar and click the Uninstall button.

Windows Vista & 7

1. Open the Start menu and go to Control Panel.
2. Click Uninstall a program.
3. Locate the program and click the Uninstall button.

Windows XP

1. Open the Start menu and go to Control Panel.
2. Click Add or Remove Programs.
3. Locate locate the unwanted software and click the Remove button.

Remove StudyHQ Toolbar from your browser

Google Chrome

1. Open the browser and press Alt+F.
2. Select Tools and click Extensions.
3. Find the extension and click the Remove button.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

1. Open the browser and press Alt+T.
2. Select Manage Add-ons and click Toolbars and Extensions.
3. Find StudyHQ Toolbar and click the Remove button.

Mozilla Firefox

1. Open the browser and press Ctrl+Shift+A.
2. Select Extensions and find the undesirable add-on.
3. Click the Remove button.