How to remove PrivacyZone Search [Chrome, Firefox, IE, Edge]

As mentioned above, the PrivacyZone Search hijacker infection also changes the browser’s search engine. So, your web browser, when searching something, will open a hodgepodge of ads, links to unwanted and ad web-pages and search results from the big search providers like Google or Bing. As a result, actual use of a web-browser’s search becomes uncomfortable. Moreover, it can also lead to slowing or even freeze your web-browser.

It’s not a good idea to have an unwanted program such as PrivacyZone Search hijacker on your computer. The reason for this is simple, it doing things you don’t know about. The hijacker can also be used to collect lots of personal information about you that can be later used for marketing purposes. You do not know if your home address, account names and passwords are safe. And of course you completely don’t know what will happen when you click on any ads on the PrivacyZone Search web page.

It’s important, do not use PrivacyZone Search web site and don’t click on advertisements placed on it, as they can lead you to various unwanted web sites. The best option is to use the step by step instructions posted below to clean your PC system of browser hijacker, remove the PrivacyZone Search redirect, and thereby return your favorite start page and search engine.

How to remove PrivacyZone Search redirect

Fortunately, it is not hard to remove the PrivacyZone Search browser hijacker. In the following instructions, we will provide two solutions to clean your personal computer of this hijacker. One is the manual removal way and the other is automatic removal solution. You can select the method that best fits you. Please follow the removal tutorial below to remove PrivacyZone Search right now!

How to manually remove PrivacyZone Search

The following instructions is a step-by-step guide, which will help you manually delete PrivacyZone Search from the Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Edge.

Removing the PrivacyZone Search, check the list of installed software first

First of all, check the list of installed applications on your PC and uninstall all unknown and recently installed software. If you see an unknown program with incorrect spelling or varying capital letters, it have most likely been installed by malware and you should clean it off first with malicious software removal tool such as Zemana Anti-malware.

Carefully browse through the list of installed software and get rid of all applications which has the name like “PrivacyZone Search”. We suggest to click ‘Installed programs’ and even sorts all installed programs by date. When you have found anything suspicious that may be the hijacker infection, ad supported software or PUPs, then choose this program and click ‘Uninstall’ in the upper part of the window. If the suspicious application blocked from removal, then run Revo Uninstaller Freeware to fully delete it from your computer.

Remove PrivacyZone Search redirect from Firefox

If the Firefox browser program is hijacked, then resetting its settings can help. The Reset feature is available on all modern version of Firefox. A reset can fix many issues by restoring Firefox settings like homepage, newtab page and search provider by default to its default state. It’ll save your personal information like saved passwords, bookmarks, and open tabs.

Click the Menu button (looks like three horizontal lines), and click the blue Help icon located at the bottom of the drop down menu as shown on the image below.

A small menu will appear, click the “Troubleshooting Information”. On this page, click “Refresh Firefox” button as displayed on the screen below.

Follow the onscreen procedure to revert back your Firefox web-browser settings to its original state.

Remove PrivacyZone Search start page from Microsoft Internet Explorer

By resetting Internet Explorer web browser you return your browser settings to its default state. This is good initial when troubleshooting problems that might have been caused by browser hijacker like PrivacyZone Search.

First, launch the Microsoft Internet Explorer. Next, click the button in the form of gear (). It will display the Tools drop-down menu, click the “Internet Options” as on the image below.

In the “Internet Options” window click on the Advanced tab, then click the Reset button. The IE will show the “Reset Internet Explorer settings” window as shown in the following example. Select the “Delete personal settings” check box, then click “Reset” button.

You will now need to reboot your PC system for the changes to take effect.

Remove PrivacyZone Search start page from Chrome

Reset Chrome settings is a easy way to get rid of the hijacker, malicious and adware extensions, as well as to recover the browser’s newtab page, homepage and search engine by default that have been modified by hijacker infection.

1. First, start the Chrome and click the Menu icon (icon in the form of three horizontal stripes).
2. It will show the Chrome main menu, click the “Settings” menu.
3. Next, click “Show advanced settings” link, which located at the bottom of the Settings page.
4. On the bottom of the “Advanced settings” page, click the “Reset settings” button.
5. The Chrome will show the reset settings prompt as shown on the image above.
6. Confirm the internet browser’s reset by clicking on the “Reset” button.
7. To learn more, read the post How to reset Chrome settings to default.

PrivacyZone Search startpage automatic removal

Many antivirus companies have developed programs that help detect and get rid of hijacker, and thereby restore web browsers settings. Below is a a few of the free applications you may want to run. Your PC system can have a large number of PUPs, adware and browser hijacker infections installed at the same time, so we suggest, if any unwanted or malicious program returns after rebooting the PC system, then boot your system into Safe Mode and use the anti malware tool again.

Automatically delete PrivacyZone Search with Zemana Anti Malware (ZAM)

You can remove PrivacyZone Search automatically with a help of Zemana AntiMalware. We recommend this malicious software removal tool because it can easily get rid of browser hijackers, potentially unwanted applications, ad-supported software and toolbars with all their components such as folders, files and registry entries.

Download Zemana by clicking on the link below and save it to your Desktop.

After the download is done, close all applications and windows on your PC system. Open a directory in which you saved it. Double-click on the icon that’s called Zemana.AntiMalware.Setup as shown on the image below.

When the setup starts, you will see the “Setup wizard” which will help you install Zemana Anti-Malware on your PC.

Once setup is complete, you will see window as shown on the image below.

Now click the “Scan” button to perform a system scan for the hijacker that cause PrivacyZone Search web-site to appear. During the scan Zemana Anti Malware will detect all threats exist on your PC.

When Zemana AntiMalware has completed scanning, Zemana will display a screen that contains a list of malware that has been found. Review the scan results and then press “Next” button.

The Zemana Free will delete hijacker which cause PrivacyZone Search site to appear and move threats to the program’s quarantine.

Run Malwarebytes to delete PrivacyZone Search

Remove PrivacyZone Search hijacker manually is difficult and often the browser hijacker is not completely removed. Therefore, we suggest you to use the Malwarebytes Free that are completely clean your computer. Moreover, the free program will allow you to get rid of malware, potentially unwanted applications, toolbars and adware that your PC can be infected too.

Download MalwareBytes AntiMalware (MBAM) from the following link.

After the downloading process is finished, close all programs and windows on your computer. Double-click the install file called mb3-setup. If the “User Account Control” dialog box pops up as displayed on the screen below, click the “Yes” button.

It will open the “Setup wizard” that will help you install MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (MBAM) on your personal computer. Follow the prompts and do not make any changes to default settings.

Once install is complete successfully, click Finish button. MalwareBytes will automatically start and you can see its main screen like below.

Now click the “Scan Now” button to begin scanning your personal computer for the browser hijacker that causes browsers to show undesired PrivacyZone Search site. While the MalwareBytes AntiMalware program is checking, you can see number of objects it has identified as threat.

Once MalwareBytes Anti Malware (MBAM) has finished scanning your machine, MalwareBytes Free will open a list of all items detected by the scan. You may move threats to Quarantine (all selected by default) by simply click “Quarantine Selected” button. The MalwareBytes Free will remove browser hijacker infection which redirects your web browser to unwanted PrivacyZone Search site and add items to the Quarantine. Once the process is finished, you may be prompted to reboot the PC system.

We suggest you look at the following video, which completely explains the process of using the MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (MBAM) to remove adware, hijacker infection and other malicious software.

Scan and free your machine of browser hijacker with AdwCleaner

The AdwCleaner tool is free and easy to use. It may scan and get rid of browser hijacker which redirects your internet browser to unwanted PrivacyZone Search web-page, malware, potentially unwanted programs and adware from machine (Microsoft Windows 10, 8, 7, XP) and thereby return browsers default settings (new tab page, homepage and search engine by default). AdwCleaner is powerful enough to find and get rid of malicious registry entries and files that are hidden on the machine.

Download AdwCleaner tool by clicking on the link below.

Once the download is finished, open the file location and double-click the AdwCleaner icon. It will start the AdwCleaner utility and you will see a screen like below. If the User Account Control prompt will ask you want to start the program, click Yes button to continue.

Next, click “Scan” . AdwCleaner tool will begin scanning the whole system to find out browser hijacker infection that alters internet browser settings to replace your newtab, homepage and search provider by default with PrivacyZone Search web page. During the scan AdwCleaner will detect all threats exist on your personal computer.

After finished, you may check all items detected on your system as shown in the figure below.

All found items will be marked. You can remove them all by simply click “Clean” button. It will show a dialog box. Click “OK” button. The AdwCleaner will remove hijacker that causes browsers to open intrusive PrivacyZone Search web-site. When the cleaning process is done, the tool may ask you to reboot your machine. After restart, the AdwCleaner will open the log file.

All the above steps are shown in detail in the following video instructions.

Block PrivacyZone Search and other unwanted pages

Running an ad blocking program such as AdGuard is an effective way to alleviate the risks. Additionally, ad-blocking software will also protect you from harmful advertisements and web-pages, and, of course, stop redirection chain to PrivacyZone Search and similar sites.

1. Download AdGuard program from the link below.
   

   Adguard download
   26627 downloads
   Version: 6.4
   Author: © Adguard
   Category: Security tools
   Update: November 15, 2018
   
2. Once the download is finished, run the downloaded file. You will see the “Setup Wizard” program window. Follow the prompts.
3. After the install is complete, click “Skip” to close the setup program and use the default settings, or press “Get Started” to see an quick tutorial which will help you get to know AdGuard better.
4. In most cases, the default settings are enough and you don’t need to change anything. Each time, when you launch your PC system, AdGuard will run automatically and block popup advertisements, web-sites such PrivacyZone Search, as well as other malicious or misleading web-sites. For an overview of all the features of the program, or to change its settings you can simply double-click on the icon named AdGuard, which can be found on your desktop.

Prevent PrivacyZone Search browser hijacker from installing

Many hijackers like PrivacyZone Search are included in the free software setup file. Most often, a user have a chance to disable all included “offers”, but some installers are developed to confuse the average users, in order to trick them into installing an adware or PUPs. Anyway, easier to prevent the browser hijacker rather than clean up your personal computer after one. So, keep the browser updated (turn on automatic updates), use a good antivirus software, double check a free applications before you launch it (do a google search, scan a downloaded file with VirusTotal), avoid harmful and unknown web pages.

Finish words

Now your computer should be free of the hijacker which redirects your internet browser to undesired PrivacyZone Search web-site. Delete AdwCleaner. We suggest that you keep Zemana AntiMalware (to periodically scan your PC for new browser hijackers and other malicious software) and AdGuard (to help you stop unwanted pop ups and malicious web pages). Moreover, to prevent browser hijackers, please stay clear of unknown and third party applications, make sure that your antivirus application, turn on the option to detect PUPs (potentially unwanted programs).

If you need more help with PrivacyZone Search home page related issues, go to our Spyware/Malware removal forum.