How to remove Yippy.com (Virus Removal Guide)

What is Yippy.com?

Yippy.com, or Yippy, is a metasearch engine that groups search results into clusters. It was previously named Clusty before being acquired by Vivisimo and later sold to IBM. Yippy.com has roughly 100,000 unique visitors per month which is considered very small for any type of website. Compared to Yahoo who has 700 million unique visitors and Bing who has 1.35 billion, Yippy.com is insignificant which contradicts how Yippy markets itself as “America’s Search Engine.”

Yippy.com is not a private search engine and information they provide about privacy is known to be inapplicable, deceptive, misleading, and/or used to adhere to a political agenda. Search results shown by Yippy.com are displayed next to advertisements to purchase Yippy merchandise, including a link to buy an official first-edition Yippy T-shirt from a third-party website.

Although Yippy markets itself as private and a competitor to Google, the websites that sell Yippy T-shirts will download a larger than average amount of data files called cookies onto the computers of its visitors. The third-party website also utilizes Google and Facebook web products and will drop various Google and Facebook cookies in order to collect, read, and use the data of their web visitors and track their online activities.

It appears as if the primary purpose of Yippy.com from a corporate standpoint is to questionably market itself to a specific demographic notoriously ill-informed about Google and other search engines and persuade them to visit affiliated websites that utilize data collection techniques, purchase merchandise, and/or become investors.

Many people have also complained that Yippy.com replaced their existing browser settings including the homepage (startup page), new tab page, and search provider similar to a browser hijacker infection or browser redirect virus. If this is the case, it is likely the result of a browser add-on or extension that modifies browser settings in order to make the browser use Yippy Search as opposed to other search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. In other scenarios, the settings may have been manually altered by another person from the same household or business.

Browser extensions can be removed from the affected browser’s settings and settings such as the homepage, new tab page, and search provider that were manually changed by another person can be adjusted in settings as well.

In conclusion, Yippy.com is not considered to be a computer virus, a browser hijacker, or essentially malicious depending on your political views. However, if you believe that your settings were changed by a browser hijacker or malicious entity we strongly advise you to use the Yippy.com removal guide below to remove Yippy.com, viruses, malware, adware, spyware, and potentially unwanted programs from your computer.

1. First, download and install Malwarebytes to scan your computer for malware and potentially unwanted programs.

2. Once Malwarebytes is installed, click the Scan Now button to begin scanning your computer.

3. When the scan is complete, click the Quarantine Selected button to remove all threats detected by Malwarebytes.

4. Reboot your computer.

5. Next, download and install HitmanPro to perform a second-opinion scan and remove remaining trace files.

6. Once HitmanPro is installed, click the Next button to begin scanning your computer.

7. When the scan is complete, click the Next button to remove all threats detected by HitmanPro.

8. Reboot your computer.

9. Finally, download and install CCleaner to automatically delete files, clean up Windows registry, and repair settings.

10. Once CCleaner is installed, click the Analyze button to begin analyzing your system.

11. When the analyzation is complete, click the Run Cleaner button to clean your system.

12. Now, let’s walk through the Tools section; Go to Tools.

13. Go to Uninstall: Is there a program you missed uninstalling before? CCleaner can often show you programs that are hidden from the Control panel.

14. Go to Software Updater: Are there any programs to update? Make sure to keep the programs on your computer up-to-date to avoid issues with security vulnerabilities.

15. Go to Startup: Go through the Windows, Scheduled Tasks, and Context Menu tabs. Are there any suspicious startup keys enabled? If so, highlight them with your mouse and click the Delete button to remove them.

16. Go to Browser Plugins: Go through the tabs for each browser installed on your computer. Are there any suspicious plugins installed? If so, highlight them with your mouse and click the Delete button to remove them.

17. Leave the Tools section and go to Registry.

18. Click the Scan for Issues button and follow the instructions.

19. Once the registry scan is complete click the Fix selected Issues… button and follow the instructions to fill all the selected issues found in your computer’s registry.

20. To ensure that rogue browser extensions have been removed launch Google Chrome.

21. In the settings menu, go to More tools > Extensions.

22. Search for suspicious browser extensions and click the Remove button if any are located.