Safari loads Bing on startup

Sonne

Hi,
I use Chrome and Safari in Catalina on my MacBook. For a couple of weeks, Safari loads Bing on start-up and in a new tab. I wonder if upgrading to Big Sur will solve the issue, or is there any methods to change my default search engine and home-page in Safari.
Thank you for any help!

Zemule

Have you checked Safari Preferences? Go to Safari drop-down menu, and then pick up Preferences>General. You will see your default home-page there. If you are unhappy with the current choice, enter your favorive page name there.

crowley

Loading in another tab is unusual behaviour, it could potentially be a rogue extension or some other malware.  Check your Safari extensions and also see if there's anything strange in Activity Monitor.

https://appletoolbox.com/safari-gets-redirected-to-bing-on-macbook-how-to-fix/

Sonne

Zemule said:

Have you checked Safari Preferences? Go to Safari drop-down menu, and then pick up Preferences>General. You will see your default home-page there. If you are unhappy with the current choice, enter your favorive page name there.

Thank you, also thank you, Crowley I have checked the preferences as suggested, here is the culprit. I am going to change it to DuckDuckGo.

Sonne

The issue is really annoying, it has restored upon the system restart despite I have cleared the home-page and search entries. So, I have done some of the steps suggested in the https://appletoolbox.com/safari-gets-redirected-to-bing-on-macbook-how-to-fix, I have also explored the issue and found a bunch of guides (e.g. https://setapp.com/how-to/remove-bing-redirect-from-mac  (sounds like marketing stuff, top-rated by Google with very poor manual sections), https://helpcenter.trendmicro.com/en-us/article/TMKA-20756 (very few manual removal tips, weird screenshots), of which https://macsecurity.net/view/226-bing-redirect-virus-mac  is most elaborate; it suggests more steps like:

- Clear History

 

- Remove Website Data

 

On the other hand, the https://macsecurity.net/view/226-bing-redirect-virus-mac guidance does not mention the general tab and search settings, which is very strange IMHO. They also suggest Combo Cleaner. Given the steps required to remove Bing manually are so tedious, I consider giving a try to this or another antivirus. Which one would you suggest, if any, or there is no way but manual cleanup?

 P.S. What if I set DuckDuckGo as my home-page, search engine, and add its extension? Will this ensure that any other websites can no longer overtake Safari?