The search engine market is over-saturated with competition. Therefore, some developers resort to illicit distribution techniques. Search.searcheasyra.com is what we call a browser hijacker which is a search engine that is distributed via malicious software bundles. It was designed to replace your existing browser’s homepage in an attempt to make you use it for performing your daily searches. In addition, it can collect information about you to show personalized ad-supported search results. The bad news is that the search results can include links of unknown origin and they can be malicious. Therefore, we urge you to remove this browser hijacker as soon as you can because it might eventually subject you to dangerous content.
Search.searcheasyra.com is distributed using malicious bundled software installers that install it on Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. The installers inject it into the browser without your knowledge or approval. As a result, this hijacker replaces the homepage address of the browsers as mentioned above. If you use it, then you should know that it redirects all entered search queries to a modified Yahoo search engine. We have found that that the search results can include additional promotional links supplied by Search.searcheasyra.com. These links can be malicious in nature and, in some cases, redirect you to infected websites that might get your computer infected with highly malicious software. Now, the possibility of this happening is rather small, but there is no reason why you should take the risk.
As mentioned in the introduction, this hijacker can collect information about you to show personalized. While this function is not malicious because nearly all search engines and ordinary websites collect this information. According to Search.searcheasyra.com’s privacy policy, it can collect information such as your search queries, browsing history, IP address, browser type, operating system type, geographical location and so on. This information is of non-personally identifiable nature. Still, you might not want to share it with highly unreliable malware developers because they will use it for marketing and advertising purposes.
If your PC has not been infected with this browser hijacker, then you should be aware of how it is distributed, so that you could avoid getting it on your PC. Our research has revealed that, in all likeliness, Search.searcheasyra.com is distributed through malicious software bundles whose installers were configured to inject this hijacker into your browser without your knowledge or consent. Indeed, the installation wizard might not give you the opportunity to uncheck Search.searcheasyra.com’s installation. Therefore, such installers are malicious. You may encounter bundled software installers that feature this hijacker on many shady free software distributing sites. So you should avoid visiting questionable websites to get your software and opt for first-party distribution sites.
As you can see, Search.searcheasyra.com is a typical browser hijacker that is set to replace your browser’s homepage to force you to search the web with it and subject you to promoted links in the process. However, the links it can subject you to can be of malicious nature, so you should consider removing this hijacker from your browser as soon as you can.
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Google Chrome
Mozilla Firefox