Hello thedog,

Would you please follow these steps :

Go to the Firefox menu (≡) => Add-ons => Extensions and remove anything that looks unfamiliar or suspicious.

Do the same in Windwos Control Panel.

Next step : run malwarescans - further information can be found in this article :

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-caused-malware?cache=no

Run most or all of the listed malware scanners. They all work differently - what one program doesn't pick up, the other might.

Also see : https://malwaretips.com/blogs/remove-search-encrypt/

Can you also please go to about:addons in your address bar, and give me the list of installed extensions? It's likely one of them are hijacking your search

Tyler Downer said

Can you also please go to about:addons in your address bar, and give me the list of installed extensions? It's likely one of them are hijacking your search

You're right - hence I asked the OP :

"Go to the Firefox menu (≡) => Add-ons => Extensions and remove anything that looks unfamiliar or suspicious."

Thanks, everyone - problem solved.

thedog, can you please relay what solved it? The reason I asked for the list of your addons is so then if we see that a certain add-on is causing this we can block it for all users.

All I have in Add Ons now is DuckDuckGo and McAfee. Search Encrypt WAS on that list, but I deleted it. I also downloaded and ran MalwareBytes, which deleted 5 affiliated files...

Hope that helps.

Oh so you've already deleted it. If it comes back please let us know before you delete it, I need the extension ID so we can block it for other users.