So, I had to “fix” my fathers browser again this morning. I swear sometimes letting the elderly loose on the internet feels like letting them rawdog a crackhead sex party under an overpass full of used syringes. They’re guaranteed to catch something.
Anyway, he had half a dozen of scam extensions installed that all added “Yahoo by <scam>” (also, he uninstalled uBO ffs).
Why?
Has yahoo become so desperate and/or scammy that they rely on malicious extensions to drive traffic to their shitty search engine? Are they so insecure that any scammer can hijack them to inject their own ads?
How the fuck can my father catch such extensions despite me locking down pretty much everything (he’s on Bluefin) and not even knowing what an extension is?
My guess would be that Yahoo is one of the few search engines with some sort of affiliate program, so if the scammers can get a browser to redirect all searches - with their affiliate code attached - they can make extra money after the initial infection. Maybe Yahoo’s has some of the loosest requirements for signups, which would explain why it shows up most often?
This is correct, from what I have heard.
That would indeed be a very plausible explanation… most of the links are ads it’s incredibly horrible.