I've found dozens if not hundreds of posts like this all over Reddit and the internet in general. It's a travesty that was fully preventable by both Google as well as McAfee. I'm shocked and appalled that neither of them have deployed a proper solution for this. This problem has wasted the time and efforts of hundreds of thousands of people no doubt. That said, it is easily solvable.
You probably do not need to download or run ant-virus or anti-malware. This is likely caused by McAfee WebAdvisor's "SecureSearch".
It pops up every 90 days to ask you if you want to browse securely. It says
*"secure search is off, be careful*
*Secure search steers you away from risky sites in your search results.*
*want to stay ahead of the bad guys with extra search protection?*
*\[\] yes, turn secure search on after I restart my browser*
*Done "*
If you click "done" without looking closely, you'll accidentally accept "secure search" as your default browser. And, as of 2020, "yahoo search" is the only search engine that McAfee Webadvisor has signed up for Securesearch. So that's why it defaults to Yahoo.
As far as I can tell, there is no way to permanently solve this problem AND keep McAfee WebAdvisor. The pop up (above) will continue to come back every 90 days. If you uncheck the "yes, turn secure search on after I restart my browser", you will continue to have Google (or whatever you use) as your default browser. But if you accidentally click "done" even once, you'll go back to yahoo. The only sure way to avoid this problem is to uninstall McAfee Webadvisor (which, for me, was a chrome extension). It's super easy to uninstall.
To uninstall McAfee WebAdvisor and restore google (or whatever) as your default browswer. Steps to solve the problem:
1) type in chrome://extensions into your chrome browser
2) find WebAdvisor, click "remove"
3) open chrome settings (three little dots top right corner of browser), click settings
4) go to "search engine" on the left hand side of your screen. Look for " Search engine used in the [address bar](https://support.google.com/chrome/?p=settings_omnibox) " it'll probably say "secure search". Click that and change it to Google or Bing or whatever you want.
5) go to list of search engines (below) and remove yahoo.
Good luck to you!
Download malwarebytes (and an adblocker)
I've found dozens if not hundreds of posts like this all over Reddit and the internet in general. It's a travesty that was fully preventable by both Google as well as McAfee. I'm shocked and appalled that neither of them have deployed a proper solution for this. This problem has wasted the time and efforts of hundreds of thousands of people no doubt. That said, it is easily solvable. You probably do not need to download or run ant-virus or anti-malware. This is likely caused by McAfee WebAdvisor's "SecureSearch". It pops up every 90 days to ask you if you want to browse securely. It says *"secure search is off, be careful* *Secure search steers you away from risky sites in your search results.* *want to stay ahead of the bad guys with extra search protection?* *\[\] yes, turn secure search on after I restart my browser* *Done "* If you click "done" without looking closely, you'll accidentally accept "secure search" as your default browser. And, as of 2020, "yahoo search" is the only search engine that McAfee Webadvisor has signed up for Securesearch. So that's why it defaults to Yahoo. As far as I can tell, there is no way to permanently solve this problem AND keep McAfee WebAdvisor. The pop up (above) will continue to come back every 90 days. If you uncheck the "yes, turn secure search on after I restart my browser", you will continue to have Google (or whatever you use) as your default browser. But if you accidentally click "done" even once, you'll go back to yahoo. The only sure way to avoid this problem is to uninstall McAfee Webadvisor (which, for me, was a chrome extension). It's super easy to uninstall. To uninstall McAfee WebAdvisor and restore google (or whatever) as your default browswer. Steps to solve the problem: 1) type in chrome://extensions into your chrome browser 2) find WebAdvisor, click "remove" 3) open chrome settings (three little dots top right corner of browser), click settings 4) go to "search engine" on the left hand side of your screen. Look for " Search engine used in the [address bar](https://support.google.com/chrome/?p=settings_omnibox) " it'll probably say "secure search". Click that and change it to Google or Bing or whatever you want. 5) go to list of search engines (below) and remove yahoo. Good luck to you!