Freshy Recipes Hijacker - How to remove

Freshy Recipes is a browser add-on for discovering and managing recipes. It was released by Tightrope Interactive, the same company that is responsible for Quick Recipes Search, Search Recipes, EasyRecipesSearch, and many other non-recipe-themed browser extensions.

Freshy Recipes helps users discover and organize recipes, but it also takes over their browsers by replacing the new tab page. It’s not great for privacy and users might want to replace it with more reputable and privacy-respecting recipe organizers.

About Freshy Recipes:

Classification	Potentially unwanted program, browser hijacker.
Associated websites	Freshyrecipes.com Cooking.freshy.com Freshyrecipes-site.com Getfreshyrecipes.com Searchtabnew.com
Problems with Freshy Recipes	It restricts browser customization for no good reason, it logs user data.
How to delete Freshy Recipes	Uninstall the extension, check your device for malware and adware (Spyhunter for Mac, Combo Cleaner for Mac, Spyhunter for Windows, etc.), check browser settings.

How does Freshy Recipes work?

Freshy Recipes is advertised on the internet

Freshy Recipes is a browser add-on. It gets installed on web browsers and changes some browser settings. Most noticeably, Freshy Recipes replaces your browser’s home/new tab page. It also logs some data about how you browse the web and use the extension.

Freshy Recipes is advertised online as a cool tool to help you find and print recipes.

Some of the ads for Freshy Recipes present it vaguely, just promise that this thing will let you print a recipe you found. This can lead people to install it unintentionally.

It changes browser settings

Once Freshy Recipes is installed on your browser, it replaces the new tab/home page. This is the page you see when you click the plus ‘+’ button at the top of the browser window to open a new tab. For a lot of people, this is also the page that opens when they start their browser.

There’s a row of trending recipes at the bottom, links to your frequently visited sites (which is great, as most browser hijackers don’t bother to include this feature), and a search bar.

Typing queries into the search bar opens Yahoo.com. Yahoo is a safe website, but it’s often promoted by browser hijackers – extensions that make unnecessary and unwanted changes to browser settings. Some of these extensions make money from promoting Yahoo, which would be fine if they were honest about it.

Besides offering a monetized search bar, Freshy Recipes also promotes Cooking.freshy.com. This site works as a recipe aggregator, linking to recipes on various other sites.

It logs user data.

When browser extensions ask to replace people’s new tab, my first question is whether they log people’s search history. One’s browsing history (what we search for in Google, Bing, etc.) can reveal a lot of private data.

More private data than even browsing history, which Freshy Recipes does log, but that usually only shows the sites that you visited and not the specific pages. By the way, this is why it’s important that websites use encryption (look for a little padlock next to the site’s name). Your ISP and others who have access to your browsing history can see what websites you have visited, but as long as those sites are encrypted, what you do on those sites remains a secret.

Back to search history, Freshy Recipes could log it. If users type them into the search box on the Freshy Recipes new tab page, these search terms go through one of Freshy Recipes’ sites before being sent to Yahoo or another search engine. The extension’s Privacy practices tab on its Chrome web store page says that the extension logs user activity on some sites, but Freshy Recipes’ privacy policy doesn’t talk about search queries, so it might not log them after all.

How to remove Freshy Recipes

Alternatives to Freshy Recipes

One thing that makes Freshy Recipes useful is that it’s recipe aggregator, but there there are other recipe aggregators out there. Ones that don’t take over your browser’s new tab page. You can make them quickly accessible by favoriting and bookmarking those sites.

Freshly Recipes also offers tools to organize recipes, but once again, there are other digital cookbooks, including web apps and mobile apps.

Remove suspicious browser extensions

If you’re uncomfortable with Freshy Recipes changing your new tab or reading your browsing history, remove this extension.

In addition, review your other extensions:

• find out who developed them and decide if you trust the developers,
• check their privacy policies and permissions and decide if you’re comfortable with the data that they collect,
• find how the operators of these extensions make money.

Only allow trusted extensions to be installed on your browser.

Below are the instructions for removing browser extensions manually. You can scan your device with an anti-malware program (such as Spyhunter for Mac, Combo Cleaner for Mac, Spyhunter for Windows, etc.) and see if there are any malicious or just potentially unwanted apps.

Automatic Malware removal tools

Manual removal instructions

TopHow To remove Freshy Recipes Hijacker from Google Chrome:

• Click on the 3 horizontal lines icon on a browser toolbar and Select More Tools→Extensions
  
• Select all malicious extensions and delete them.
  
• Click on the 3 horizontal lines icon on a browser toolbar and Select Settings
  
• Select Manage Search engines
  
• Remove unnecessary search engines from the list
  
• Go back to settings. On Startup choose Open blank page (you can remove undesired pages from the set pages link too).
• If your homepage was changed, click on Chrome menu on the top right corner, select Settings. Select Open a specific page or set of pages and click on Set pages.
  
• Delete malicious search websites at a new Startup pages window by clicking “X” next to them.
  

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings

If you are still experiencing any issues related to Freshy Recipes Hijacker, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Click on a Chrome’s menu button (three horizontal lines) and select Settings.
• Scroll to the end of the page and click on theReset browser settings button.
  
• Click on the Reset button on the confirmation box.
  

If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.

How to remove Freshy Recipes Hijacker from Microsoft Edge:Top

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Microsoft Edge window. Select “Extensions”.

• Select all malicious extensions and delete them.

• Click on the three-dot menu on the browser toolbar and Select Settings

• Select Privacy and Services and scroll down. Press on Address bar.

• Choose Manage search engines.

• Remove unnecessary search engines from the list: open the three-dot menu and choose Remove.

• Go back to Settings. Open On start-up.
• Delete malicious search websites at Open specific page or pages by opening the three-dot menu and clicking Delete.

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings If you are still experiencing any issues related to Freshy Recipes Hijacker, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings

• Click on Edge's menu button and select Settings. Click on the Reset Settings button on the left.
• Press the Restore settings to their default values option.

• Click on the Reset button on the confirmation box.

If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.

How To remove Freshy Recipes Hijacker from Firefox:Top

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Mozilla window and select the “Add-ons” icon (Or press Ctrl+Shift+A on your keyboard).
  
• Go through Extensions and Addons list, remove everything Freshy Recipes Hijacker related and items you do not recognise. If you do not know the extension and it is not made by Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, Oracle or Adobe then you probably do not need it.
  
• If your homepage was changed, click on the Firefox menu in the top right corner, select Options → General. Enter a preferable URL to the homepage field and click Restore to Default.
  

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings If you are still experiencing any issues related to Freshy Recipes Hijacker, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Mozilla Firefox window. Click on the Help button.
  
• ChooseTroubleshooting Information on the Help menu.
  
• Click on theReset Firefox button.
  
• Click on the Reset Firefox button on the confirmation box. Mozilla Firefox will close and change the settings to default.
  

If the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program to identify malicious entries.