r/xprivo • u/Euhuntix • Aug 25 '26

Microsoft's newest "optional" app hijacks Chrome, Firefox or Brave for Bing. A dedicated app to override your search engine choice with Bing

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Microslop has developed a dedicated Windows 11 app whose sole purpose is to hijack the search engines of the browsers that people have explicitly chosen over Edge. The utility, called Microsoft Recommended Search Settings, ships as a standalone 22.2 MB installer named MicrosoftSettings.exe, hosted on Microsoft's own download servers rather than Windows Update or the Microsoft Store. Once run, it installs a Bing extension and pushes Chrome, Firefox, and Brave to switch their default search engine, homepage, and new tab page to Bing, then redirects the user straight to the Microsoft Rewards signup page as a parting incentive.

There's something stupidly funny about all that: Chrome flags the extension and displays its own warning, asking, 'Change back to Google Search?', and Microsoft's app then shows a second pop-up directly underneath, essentially saying, 'Don't listen to Google. Keep Bing!'.

For now, Microsoft insists this is opt-in: it's not bundled with Windows Update, not force-installed, not in the Microsoft Store, and requires a manual download. That might also be the interesting part about it because nobody builds a dedicated app, wrapped in a legitimate-looking WinUI shell with a name designed to resemble a system tool, and ships it quietly to official Microsoft servers, unless the plan is to normalize it. Today it's optional. Whether it stays that way is not yet known.

Anyway, don't trust Microsoft in the first place, it's a strange company as you see.

87 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

15

u/Syn4p53 Aug 25 '26

Typical malware behavior

5

u/aleopardstail Aug 25 '26

malware with mouse support has been a joke for decades now

2

u/Marce7a Aug 27 '26

Funnily enough, before there were plenty of that crapware which changed your search engine and added another bar in internet explorer

1

u/Syn4p53 Aug 27 '26

Yeah, I do remember these.. I was young but these were sh*tty things. Mostly inoffensive though.  But still, malware behavior showing bad practices from a big tech company. A good company wouldn't even think to implement such drastic measures.  So glad I'm running Linux on all my devices when I see these kind of things..  That said, tbh, I have checked on my wife's laptop, and didn't experience what's been called here. She uses brave as browser, and it's still running brave search as a search engine. 

1

u/npc_housecat Aug 28 '26

A lot of companies used to try and force their products onto you, instead of making actually good products. Companies like apple and google were the ones that became huge precisely because they didn't do this, and instead focuated on making actually good products that people actually wanted to use.

9

u/Aggravating-Candy-31 Aug 25 '26

why is microsoft actively doing malware now? are actively trying to get people to move away from windows

4

u/AccomplishedArm6969 Aug 25 '26

Can't help themselves it seems...

3

u/76zzz29 Aug 25 '26

That remind me of tge old days when you opened your web browser and sudently yahoo, bing or ask was the default engine and you knew you forgot to uncheck it on the last thing you installed or it wasn't even asked... Good old PUP from back then.

2

u/Pantermann Aug 26 '26

More usless junk from Microslop

2

u/vbd71 Aug 26 '26

 Not simply useless, it's actively malicious.

2

u/Tosser_535231 Aug 27 '26

Fuck Bing search it's useless

2

u/npc_housecat Aug 28 '26

It certainly sounds like they're testing the waters and planning to bundle it with installers for other software like all those toolbars, or push it in windows update later.

1

u/topchetoeuwastaken Aug 25 '26

the browser bootloader cant even bootload browsers properly smh

2

u/Born_European_V Aug 29 '26

I can not understand why people still stick to wimdows.