Help with Safari

[gregorywrites]

Hi, folks. A friend of mine is having problems with his Safari app. He says that when he clicks on the Safari icon, it takes him to some website he doesn't want to go to. I'm wondering if there is any way he can uninstall the Safari app, and then reinstall it?

Any other ideas?

thanks,

Greg
..

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

Sounds like malware

 

[lcubed]

what website? what is the default safari home page under the safari preferences> general

 

[Ruggy]

Sounds like malware as has been said.
Tell them to download Malwarebytes as first recourse and see if it finds anything.
Also they need to check their DNS servers because it might be malware that has changed those.
In order to do that you need to know what the DNS addresses of your ISP should be and then go to Network Preferences and check that they are the same.
(Or perhaps copy the ones they have- which will be a string of numbers- and do a search to see if they are linked to malware)
You can't uninstall Safari but it won't solve the problem in any case.

 

[Jzap van der Veen]

If the same site opens every time when opening the Safari app, a new tab or a new window it is probably the home page setting in preferences (as mentioned by lcubed).

If Safari keeps opening different clearly unwanted (adware) sites, not just when opening Safari, a new tab or window, but every time trying to close a window or tab, malware could definitely be the problem.

If that is the case use MalwareBytes (as mentioned by Ruggy, to check for malware) also use EtreCheck to check if all MacOS built in security settings are activitated.