Remove Weknow from Chrome

Question

Level 1

6 points

Remove Weknow from Chrome

Dear all,

A relative of mine has a 2015 Macbook with Yosemite and, somehow, Weknow malware is now installed.

I managed to remove it from Safari but not from Chrome. When you start Chrome, the page that appears is the one I chose in Settings, but when you open a new tab, the Weknow search page appears.

I've tried to follow the manual uninstall instructions of weknow.ac

but when I reach this point

Delete Profiles:

1. Open System Preferences

2. Go to Profiles

3. In the window that opens, choose the AdminPrefs and click the minus button on the bottom left – then click Remove - click OK.

the problem is that I don't have any profile icon in System Preferences (I'm logged in as administrator).

I've scanned and cleaned the Macbook using Malwarebytes, and it removed quite a few files with suspicious names such as myshopcoupon, but the new tab in Chrome still shows the search page from Weknow.

I've run out of ideas. Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Sep 15, 2018 5:30 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

macjack

Level 10

111,242 points

Sep 15, 2018 6:28 AM in response to jobuscon

Did you also delete all the Chrome data files? Look in your Home/Library/Chrome and in Preferences and Application Support for the files.

The Home Library is hidden by default but you can get there by pressing command-shift-period in a Finder Window.

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Answer 2

macjack

Level 10

111,242 points

Sep 15, 2018 5:33 AM in response to jobuscon

See the post by thomas_r from Malwarebytes:

Remove "weknow.ac" Malware in Chrome?

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Answer 3

jobuscon Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 16, 2018 3:29 AM in response to jobuscon

After following macjack and Eric Root advice (thanks are due to both of them), it seems there was just one thing left to do: restarting the Macbook, which I did and now it seems the malware is removed and Chrome is back to normal.

Best regards,

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Answer 4

jobuscon Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 15, 2018 6:06 AM in response to macjack

Thank you for the quick reply, macjack. I followed thomas_r instructions

"completely delete Chrome and all Chrome data files from the computer. Then reinstall a fresh copy of Chrome, and set it up from scratch"

and now, not only the new tabs but also the homepage in Chrome shows the search page from Weknow (even though in Crome settings the home page is google.com).

Any further ideas?

Best regards,

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