Google Chrome Safe Browsing offers protection against malicious websites – it warns you if you are about to navigate to a dangerous website or to download something dangerous.

AVAST anti malware offer their Secure Browser extension for the most popular browsers for Windows and Mac.

Other anti-virus and anti-malware companies offer similar facilities – designed to stop malware attacks in your browser before they can get to your device.

However there is a website “get.browsersafelyapp.com” which sis advertised as offering such protection,  but doesn’t do that.

Instead it hijacks your browser i.e. it changes your web browser’s settings and does not allow you to change them back.

Typically, browser hijackers promote fake search engines by changing the default search engine. In this case, it’s to browsesafelysearch.com which does give search results, but those results come from Yahoo (which is legitimate). However, the fake search engine can insert whatever fake links it wants to in the results.

Removing browsesafelyapp once it’s installed is possible but is a tricky process.

It is common that browser hijackers collect data such as IP addresses, geolocations, search queries etc. and forward the data to the scammers, where it can be sold to Marketing companies or to other scammers.

Only use the reputable search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.