What Does Smilebox Tab Browser Extension Do?

Smilebox Tab is a browser extension that is distributed through the Chrome Web Store.

The extension does largely what its description states - it will change the content of your blank new tab in Chrome. Instead of getting a blank tab with a Google search box in it, you will see a Smilebox interface and search bar in your new tabs.

There is nothing particularly malicious or misleading about the extension, not in the way some other browser hijackers will swap your homepage and default search engine too, and do it without disclosing it.

However, all that the extension does with its custom search engine is feed your search query through suggest.smilebox.co and then return a Bing results page. There is no real purpose to this, as you are essentially using Bing search through a proxy at this point.

There is no real reason to feed your search history and queries into the additional search engine. Similar third-party search engines that never produce their own results often collect this data and share it with third parties such as advertisers.