What is Genieo and why did it appeared misteriosouly on my MacBook Pro?

On Mac:

• From the Applications folder, open "Uninstall Genieo" and follow the instructions.
• If from any reason the uninstall is missing you can download it from here.

Remove Genieo from your browser's home-page & default search:Once you completed uninstalling, you can remove Genieo from your homepage and search provider. Please refer to the instructions that matches your browser. We strongly advise you to restart your PC before taking these actions.

• Remove from Chrome
• Remove from Internet Explorer
• Remove from Firefox
  To change the default search please follow these instructions:
  • Type “about:config” into the address bar and click “Enter”.
  • Click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
  • Type “keyword.URL” into the search box that appears.
  • Right-click on the “keyword.URL” entry and click “Modify”
  • Delete the text in the box and click “OK”
• Remove from Safari, Safari 5.X

Genieo is a computer virus, or malware according to Malwarebytes Anti-Malwar PRO.

To manually remove the Genieo virus and stop your browser from redirecting to search.genieo.com and other websites for free you can use these instructions for Mac and PC: http://botcrawl.com/how-to-remove-the-genieo-virus/

Mac OS X Uninstall - Genieo Mac uninstall

1. Launch Activity Monitor and change “My Processes” at the top to “All Processes”, then make sure Genieo is not running. If it is, quit the process before proceeding.
2. Launch Finder and search for Genieo. You can narrow the search to specific folders or search your whole Mac. Searching “File Name” vs “Contents” usually provides better results.
3. Click the + button below the search term to add criteria
4. Click the search criteria drop-down and select “Other…”, then “System files”
5. Click the “don’t include” and change to “include”
6. Sort by name, kind, date, etc. to identify components of the app, such as folders, .plist files, cache files. etc.
7. Delete all files and folders related to the app.
8. Don’t empty your Trash until you’ve determined that everything is working OK, in case you need to restore something you deleted by accident.
9. A reboot might be necessary to completely remove some apps.

There is no malware involved here. Genieo appears to be legitimate software:

http://www.genieo.com

There is no indication that I can find that this is anything remotely malicious, so I'm not sure what "hijacker virus" you're referring to. As to how it got on your Dock, someone must have downloaded it and put it there.

As to the alert about someone using the same IP address, that is simply an error caused by some machine on your network having been configured incorrectly to have a self-assigned IP address. Your wireless router is responsible for deciding which machines get which IP addresses, and if a machine is assigned a fixed IP address in the range of addresses that the router uses, there can be a conflict. You need to figure out which machine that is and change its network settings so that it is assigned an IP address using DHCP.

Javier23gol wrote:

Thomas nobody downloaded it. I search in google and some people have the same problem as I http://www.mywot.com/en/forum/25962-genieo-com-browser-hijacker

It appeared misteriosouly.

Javier23gol,

I have read the posts on this site you have linked and can not come to a conclusion that this genieo software was in anyway malicious and cannot discern from information provided that is invades or hijacks your computer, as you have previously stated a password has prevented installation of software malicious or not malicious onto your macbook, be thankful that you are using OSX and not another vulnerable operating system.

This being said however does not rule out that someone other than yourself has had access to your computer or has introduced an altered or unaltered copy of what seems to be legitimate software to your local network which could be infact malicious.

I can only see one outstanding issue from your original post in this thread is the issue with the IP conflict on your macbook and whether this has been resolved.

Ciao

Sidonsoft

Thomas nobody downloaded it.

Yes, someone downloaded it. It sounds like it comes bundled with some software, like Firefox. Though you may not have installed Firefox, you (or someone else) definitely installed something that included Genieo.

I search in google and some people have the same problem as I http://www.mywot.com/en/forum/25962-genieo-com-browser-hijacker

That is a forum post from one single person, whose opinion is not particularly valid without corroboration.

There have been a number of positive reviews of Genieo, some fairly recent. Further, I have been tracking Mac malware for a number of years now, and Genieo has never come to my attention in any way. There is no anti-virus engine that identifies this software as malware. (I just checked that using VirusTotal.) It is simply a misunderstood product that has garnered a small amount of ill will due to two things: 1) people reading too much into what it does and 2) being bundled with other software.

Today is my 2nd time uninstalling Genieo and that wasted another 45min of my time as I research how to remove it. I am the only one who has access to my iMac and I know I have not installed it even the 1st time. Question is how it got back in again??? GRRRRRRR. Can anyone suggest what to setup to prevent it from downloading by itslef again? Thought Mac was supersafe in this area though I have never experienced this with Mac in my 8 years history. I really dont wanna waste more time/effort on continuous uninstall. PLEASSSSSSEEEEE HELPPP!!

BTW, whatever one may call it malicious or derogatively "forth coming", installing a software without my consent is hijacking.

Thanks in advance.

It cannot install itself without your active participation. However, Genieo has been known to come bundled with other software in the past. (Generally crap software, in my opinion.) You need to pay close attention to what you are installing and what baggage it carries along with it. That may explain how it got installed the first time. As for the second time, perhaps you just didn't get it removed properly the first time, or perhaps you downloaded something else that had Genieo bundled with it.

Ya I was wondering about that. Kinda backdorr install. Guess what. As I removed Genioe yest, this afternoon I page with its search engine page appeared on my Chrome out of no where. shock the bit of me into place. lol scary.

Maybe this will help.

In finder go to Utilities, then Activity Monitor, then when you see Genieo select it, then select the RED quit button. It will ask you if you "really want to quit Genieo" then simply quit.

Then quit Activity Monitor.

After that, go into your Application folder and drag Genieo to the trash. Then empty trash.

If you are using Safari and it opens to the Genieo page, in the Safari drop down, select preferences, General Tab.

You can then see what is set as your Safari home page. If that page shows Genieo then change it. You may have to go within Safari to what page you want as a home first in order to make it your current page, then select Set to Current Page and that will become your web page when you first open Safari.

I do not know if this will remove all Genieo files. Hope this helps!

Mendis, my apologies if my post construed any relationship Genioe have with Mac. Wasnt meant to be. Was just stumped how it got back in since last time and was looking for permanent solution. I went to their website and read about them sure. The only possible channel I think was when Firefox upated recently and perhaps it laid dormant and something triggered it. Thanks anyhow.

BZ-LA : thanks for teh pointer. I checked but nothing of Geneio there but next time I know where to look. This is great info and after 8 years of using Mac, its the first time I have had to check this. Haha.... guess a +ve thing came out from it. Also I dont use Safari anymore as there is a major page reload problem that lost my days of research before........cheerrs

I came to this discussion researching genieo, because I wanted to downlaod some music with ncdownloader.com and it delivered first InstallGenieo.dmg, which I did not trust . Maybe that is how you got the application on your computer?

I am running linux and found that a vidxden.com popup page told my browser to automatically download and install InstallGenieo.dmg to my computer from http://download.genieo.com/partner/genTugM/mac_release/live/InstallGenieo.dmg -- I found this page looking to find out what this file was and why it was trying to install intself. So I think it is entirely possible that it got installed without any real intention on any user's part.

It could have gotten DOWNLOADED that way without any user interaction. It could not get installed that way. Any Mac users with Genieo installed got it either by installing it directly or by installing some junky third-party software that gets paid by Genieo to bundle it with their software.

Any chance that the browser went "blah downloaded, run install?" or something similar? Technically that hitting "okay" or "yes" or whatever is user interaction, but the average user is unlikely to notice or may think it's part of some other website or application. (This strategy is used all the time by spyware developers who develop for that other OS)

I only noticed because I was staring at my downloads looking for something else and went "Wait, what is this .dmg file? What on earth is a .dmg file?"

In any case, the download-without-request is questionable behavior, and I've informed Genieo of the site in hopes that Genieo is the reputable developer they seem to be. (It's also questionable behavior for a browser, and I'm currently poking through my browser's security options, because I'm really unimpressed with that sort of behavior)