Tavanero Search On Mac OS X

Tavanero Search is the name of a browser hijacker that can affect your browser of choice on a Mac computer. Regardless of whether you use Chrome, Firefox or Mac's own Safari browser, your Internet experience can be marred by the presence of Tavanero Search on your system.

Browser hijackers are classified as potentially unwanted applications or PUAs. A PUA is not of the same elevated threat level as most malware and will not lock your computer the way ransomware does, not will it directly expose you to further means of attack and damage the way a backdoor or a Trojan would. However, potentially unwanted applications are, as their very name suggests, unwanted software that will diminish your experience when working on your computer or browsing the Internet.

Tavanero Search, like most other browser hijackers, has the ability to change your browser's default search engine, as well as your usual home page and new tab content. You will find that once you have Tavanero Search installed, your browser's homepage will likely be swapped to hxxps://tavanero.info/tavanero/tavanero.php. This is just part of the issue. If you manually change your homepage back to your usual one, you will discover that it has been changed to Tavanero's page once again, without your consent.

To do this, Tavanero Search adds two new policies to the registry on Windows systems. Those are HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Policies\Google\Chrome\HomepageLocation and HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Policies\Google\Chrome\RestoreOnStartupURLs\1. This means that manually reverting your homepage back or cleaning your browser shortcuts from any arguments added by Tavanero will not work. On Macs this can be done with the installation of browser helper objects that keep resetting your homepage.

You may also find that any search results you receive through Tavanero's search engine are heavily loaded with additional advertising, injected in the search results page.

Additionally, the browser helper objects installed may collect data that may be potentially personally identifiable. This includes your search queries, pages the user browses and IP address.

Browser hijackers usually do this because they can later share this information with advertising networks for the purposes of targeted advertising and generate revenues in the process.

There are a lot of similar browser hijackers that resemble Tavanero's behavior and they all operate in a similar way. The user's browsing experience is diminished by unsolicited ads, their search queries are redirected and usually the search strings are collected, and the browser is intrusively forced to use the newly installed search engine.

The way browser hijackers and a lot of other potentially unwanted applications get on users' computers is usually software bundling. Installers that contain bundled software will often carry a "main attraction" legitimate application that the user may find desirable.

However, PUAs can piggy-back inside the same bundle installer. If the user quickly clicks through the installer without carefully examining all options, they will usually unwittingly agree to installing the PUA as well.

This is why it's important to be careful when dealing with free application installers downloaded from online sources that are not official, monitored outlets such as the Apple App Store. If you really need to install an application downloaded elsewhere, make sure you carefully look at all options inside the installer window and never choose the "Express" install option, as that's how PUAs usually get on your system unnoticed.