Hijacked Chrome Extensions Cleanup

Released: January 31, 2014

Google has acknowledged that some Chrome extensions come bundled with malicious programs that try to hijack your browser settings. To help keep your browser settings under your control Google added a “reset browser settings (external link) ” button to Chrome’s settings page in October.

Despite this, settings hijacking remains the number one user complaint. To make sure the reset option reaches everyone who might need it, Chrome will be prompting Windows users whose settings appear to have been changed if they’d like to restore their browser settings back to factory default. If you’ve been affected by settings hijacking and would like to restore your settings, just click “Reset” on the prompt when it appears.

Note that this will disable any extensions, apps and themes you have installed. If you’d like to reactivate any of your extensions after the reset, you can find and re-enable them by looking in the Chrome menu under “More tools > Extensions.” Apps are automatically re-enabled the next time you use them.