Do you know what CatHomepage Toolbar is?
CatHomepage Toolbar is a piece of software targeted at users who love cats. If you install it on your PC from the Chrome Web Store (chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cathomepage/glhahjphgpghoefihgllamaapanabkmp) or its official website cathomepage.com, the settings of the homepage and the New Tab page will be changed on all your browsers (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox). You will also see the search box of search.myway.com in the middle of your screen, and you could change the background image by selecting a particular image or uploading your own picture. On top of that, you will be allowed to enable the weather widget in order to get the weather forecast for your area immediately after you open your browser. CatHomepage Toolbar seems to be a useful piece of software; however, it is not exactly true. In fact, our security specialists do not even suggest keeping it installed because their experience has shown that Mindspark Interactive Network, Inc. products cannot be trusted fully despite the fact that they seem to be quite useful. Find out why CatHomepage Toolbar is often called a potentially unwanted program by specialists. If you decide to get rid of it after reading the article, use the step-by-step instructions you can find below.
CatHomepage Toolbar screenshot
Scroll down for full removal instructions
The main reason why specialists do not recommend keeping the CatHomepage Toolbar installed is because they consider the search.myway.com search tool untrustworthy. As its box appears on users’ homepages, many people decide to use it as the default search tool. According to our specialists, users who do that might put their systems in danger quickly because the search results they get after entering the search query are not all trustworthy. To be more specific, users might be provided with the modified search results, i.e. they might see advertisements and links promoting third-party websites. These ads might be associated with the search query; however, users are not blind and immediately notice if they are taken to a website that only promotes a particular product or service instead of containing the necessary information. Some of these websites the My Way search engine promotes might be unreliable at all, and you might even find dangerous links or software on them.
We do not think that it is a good idea to keep CatHomepage Toolbar and search.myway.com also because they collect information about users. We have checked the Privacy Policy document for you and found that different types of information will be gathered:
- Information you provide yourself
- Automatically-captured information
- Information collected by third-parties
Unfortunately, it is also said that all these collected details will be shared with third parties. To be more specific, the gathered data will be sent to authorized service providers, advertisers, and business partners. If you do not want to provide any information about yourself, you need to remove CatHomepage Toolbar fully. In fact, CatHomepage Toolbar not only collects information about users. Research has shown that this piece of software might manage apps, extensions, and themes. In addition, it might read your browsing history and check what you have downloaded. Specialists believe that a trustworthy application should not act like that, so they suggest that you get rid of CatHomepage Toolbar as soon as possible.
Mindspark Interactive Network, Inc. has already developed and will develop in the future a bunch of programs. They usually have their official websites, and users can download them willingly; however, it is known that they might enter computers rather secretly too. These potentially unwanted programs might be spread in software bundles as well, so you should be careful on third-party websites and install a security tool on your computer as soon as possible. Finally, you need to install new applications attentively, i.e. to read the information provided for you on the installation window.
The deletion of CatHomepage Toolbar will not be an easy process because you will have to delete it from browsers separately. For example, Internet Explorer users have to delete the software through Control Panel, whereas those who use Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome need to erase it manually. You will find instructions provided below that will help you to do that; however, if it is still unclear for you what you need to do, you should use SpyHunter.
Remove CatHomepage Toolbar
From Internet Explorer
Windows XP
- Open the Start menu.
- Click Control Panel.
- Click Add or Remove Programs.
- Select the undesirable software and delete it.
Windows 7/Vista
- Open the Start menu.
- Click Control Panel and then open Uninstall a program.
- Right-click on the undesirable software.
- Uninstall it.
Windows 8/8.1/10
- Tap the Windows key + X.
- Click Control Panel.
- Go to Uninstall a program.
- Select the unwanted application and then uninstall it.
From Mozilla Firefox
- Tap Win+E.
- Open %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[PROFILE]\extensions.
- Delete _hrMembers_@free.cathomepage.com.
- Go to %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[PROFILE] and remove CatHomepage_hr.
Google Chrome
- Open the Windows Explorer (Win+E).
- Go to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\[PROFILE]\Extensions.
- Remove the folder whose name consists of random letters, e.g. glhahjphgpghoefihgllamaapanabkmp.
In non-techie terms:
CatHomepage Toolbar might have been installed on your computer together with other undesirable programs, so it would be better to delete this PUP using an automatic malware remover to make the system clean. An automatic tool will not only delete CatHomepage Toolbar, but will also eliminate other infections. They might be hiding on your system and working secretly in the background.