Dear Diva,
I downloaded some software recently, and right after, I noticed that my browsers all had a home page of MyStart Incredibar. What is this, and how do I get rid of it?
A frustrated Beth in Lake Oswego, OR
Dear Frustrated Beth,
I feel your pain. Oftentimes, when we download software, additional software is installed on our system without us really noticing what is going on. For instance, installing a Java update always gives you the option to install additional software. If you are aware of this, then as you are going through the install wizard you will notice a screen specifically stating the wizard is going to install additional software. You usually have the option of not installing it.
Getting back to Incredibar, it is designed to alter all of your web browsers to direct your home page to mystart.incredibar.com. It also starts gathering information about your activity, logs every visited site, and send this data out to marketing companies.
The first thing you should do when becoming infected with Incredibar is to run MalwareBytes in full mode and remove anything it finds. Then you need to fix the settings of your web browser to remove any incredibar add-ons, and change the start page. I would change the startpage to https://www.google.com. Sometimes, Firefox is a little problematic in removing the Incredibar add-ons. If that is the case, I would uninstall Firefox, clean the registry with Ccleaner (www.piriform.com), and then install a fresh copy of Firefox. Many ways exist in which to remove Incredibar from Firefox, but for the novice PC user, installing a fresh copy is usually the easiest way to handle the issue.
As always, we are here to help, and if you need assistance with this issue, feel free to contact us.
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