Has your homepage been changed to Search.fr-recherche.com? You have no idea how that happened? It might be the case that you got infected with a browser hijacker after having download freeware applications. Despite the fact that Search.fr-recherche.com seems to be powerful by Ask search engine, this domain does not seem trustworthy. Not to mention to that Ask has discontinued search engines support since 2011, so whatever powers Search.fr-recherche.com, it is not the official search provider. To protect yourself from potential exploitations and other security threats, you need to remove Search.fr-recherche.com from your computer.
When your default home page and search engine settings are modified, the next time you open your browser (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer); you will be redirected to Search.fr-recherche.com. The website comes equipped with a search box that once used provides you relatively decent search results, although they are full of commercial and sponsored links that most probably would lead you to third party websites.
Search.fr-recherche.com also has shortcut links to Facebook, Yahoo!, Twitter, YouTube and other popular websites. The page comes entirely in French which means that this browser hijacker is primarily directed at French-speaking users. Also, you cannot ignore the flash advertisement that always appears right above the Search.fr-recherche.com search box. The contents of the advertisement usually depend on your location, but for the most part you are offered to download a new FLV player, a new codec or an update to your media player.
It should be pointed out that users should NEVER click flash advertisements on such unreliable websites, because they lead to other affiliated pages that are inclined to make financial profit by generating web traffic or by making you fill out various online marketing surveys. In general, browser hijackers are not extremely dangerous by themselves, but Search.fr-recherche.com could be used by malware distributors to expose you to dangerous pages and various malware distributor networks.
To protect yourself from serious computer infection you need to remove Search.fr-recherche.com immediately. In case the program that installed Search.fr-recherche.com onto your computer has an entry on the list of installed programs, you can remove it manually via Control Panel. Resetting your browser settings to default may also be a reasonable option, as this way you would be able to delete all the browsing history that might have been collected by this browser hijacker.
However, the most efficient way to deal with Search.fr-recherche.com would be investing in a licensed antimalware tool that would terminate not only Search.fr-recherche.com, but other potentially unwanted programs residing in your system as well. Not to mention that a reliable computer security tool would safeguard the PC against similar infections in the future. Should you have any further questions on Search.fr-recherche.com or browser hijackers in general, please leave us a comment below.
Windows 8
Windows Vista & Windows 7
Windows XP
Mozilla Firefox
Internet Explorer
Google Chrome