Guardengine.com Redirects - How to remove

Guardengine.com is a search engine that might appear unexpectedly on your screen. It’s a functional search engine, but it does have some features of a hijacker. If you find yourself forced to visit Guardengine.com against your wishes, there might be a browser add-on or a desktop program behind this.

About Guardengine.com:

Threat type	Potentially unwanted program, search hijacker.
What causes redirects to Guardengine.com	Desktop apps and browser extensions, browser search engine preferences.
Problems and issues	Guardengine.com lacks basic features, it promises privacy yet tracks its users, it shows a lot of ads.
How to stop Guardengine.com redirects	Find and remove unwanted programs, browser add-ons manually and with anti-malware scanners (Spyhunter for PC, Spyhunter for Mac, Malwarebytes), check the browser settings for default search engine.

What is Guardengine.com?

Guardengine.com appears unexpectedly

I first learned about Guardengine.com when I stumbled on an old question by a user. This person said that their browser kept opening Guardengine.com against their wishes.

This is typical search hijacker behavior. If a browser starts opening an unknown or unwanted website out of the blue, it usually means that a malicious browser extension was installed.

Guardengine.com looks very similar to Info.com. I also noticed that Guardengine.com is related to many very similar search sites, including Options.xyz, Directdeals.io, Socialscour.com, Answersonly.com, Internetresults.com, Helpful.tips, and Answers.guide. These sites all have their own unique flavor presentations, but they function identically. The same search results, the same ads. The same company, Elevated Media Inc.

It is typical of search hijackers to have many clones. This helps these sites reach many people while staying under the radar and makes these sites harder to block. I’m not saying that Guardengine.com is malicious, but it does look a lot like browser hijacker sites.

It offers privacy, but…

Guardengine.com is a search engine – a site that allows you to search the web and displays relevant results. It’s presented as a privacy search engine, as it promises to not track your personal information or search queries.

Indeed, many major search engines, such as Google.com and Bing.com, do track search queries. However, they also let you control your search tracking. When you open Google.com search results, click on Settings and then click Search history to learn more.

Guardengine.com boasts that it doesn’t track your search queries. But, according to its privacy policy, it does track some data:

• Details of your use of our services, including traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data and the resources that you use on our services.
• Information about your internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type.

According to the same privacy policy, Guardengine.com may also collect data about its users from third parties. It may use all this data for advertising purposes. After all, search engines make money from advertising.

Not to mention, Guardengine.com specifically uses Google ads, exposing its users to tracking by Google.

Guardengine.com is not a good search engine

Despite the problems, is Guardengine.com worth using at all?

I don’t think so. Guardengine.com lacks a lot of functions that search engines offer: buttons to sort search results by type, time, language, and advanced search.

In addition, Guardengine.com shows a lot of ads. I’m not used to seeing more than three ads at the top of Google or Bing search results, yet Guardengine.com shows six of them, plus related and featured searches.

Guardengine.com’s ads a labeled very faintly with a light gray “Ad”, which is a bit of a problem as it’d be easy to mistake them for real results. Ads should be easy to tell apart.

How to get rid of Guardengine.com

If your browser is opening Guardengine.com against your wishes, there are a few possible explanations:

• The default search engine in browser settings has been set to Guardengine.com.
• A browser add-on that is installed is opening Guardengine.com.
• A desktop app is making browsers open Guardengine.com.

Below are instructions for how to uninstall programs and browser extensions, as well as how to change default search settings.

Finding which app of extension is causing problems can be tricky. You can use an anti-malware program like Spyhunter for Windows, Spyhunter for Mac, Malwarebytes, or other reliable programs. You can also disable all browser extensions one by one until you see the Guardengine.com redirects stop.

Automatic Malware removal tools

Manual removal instructions

How to remove Guardengine.com Redirects using Windows Control Panel

Many hijackers and adware like Guardengine.com Redirects install some of their components as regular Windows programs as well as additional software. This part of malware can be uninstalled from the Control Panel. To access it, do the following.

• Start→Control Panel (older Windows) or press Windows Key→Search and enter Control Panel and then press Enter (Windows 8, Windows 10).
• Choose Uninstall Program (if you don't see it, click in the upper right next to "View by" and select Category).
• Go through the list of programs and select entries related to Guardengine.com Redirects . You can click on "Name" or "Installed On" to reorder your programs and make Guardengine.com Redirects easier to find.
• Click the Uninstall button. If you're asked if you really want to remove the program, click Yes.
• In many cases anti-malware programs are better at detecting related parasites, thus I recommend installing Spyhunter to identify other programs that might be a part of this infection.

How to remove Guardengine.com Redirects from macOS

Delete Guardengine.com Redirects from your applications.

1. Open Finder.
2. In the menu bar, click Go.
3. Select Applications from the dropdown.
4. Find the Guardengine.com Redirects app.
5. Select it and right-click it (or hold the Ctrl and click the left mouse button).
6. In the dropdown, click Move to Bin/Trash. You might be asked to provide your login password.

TopHow To remove Guardengine.com Redirects 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 Guardengine.com Redirects, 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 Guardengine.com Redirects 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 Guardengine.com Redirects 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 Guardengine.com Redirects, 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.

How to remove Guardengine.com Redirects 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 Guardengine.com Redirects, 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 Guardengine.com Redirects from Safari:Top

Remove malicious extensions

• Click on Safari menu on the top left corner of the screen. Select Preferences.
  
• Select Extensions and uninstall Guardengine.com Redirects and other suspicious extensions.
  
• If your homepage was changed, click on Safari menu on the top left corner of the screen. Select Preferences and choose General tab. Enter preferable URL to the homepage field.
  

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings(older versions) If you are still experiencing any issues related to Guardengine.com Redirects, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Click on Safari menu on the top left corner of the screen. Select Reset Safari…
  
• Select which options you want to reset (usually all of them come preselected) and click on the Reset button.
  

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