GamesQuest Chrome Extension

GamesQuest is a Google Chrome browser extension reportedly, and there would have been nothing wrong about it had it not been for the fact that:

• The GamesQuest Chrome Extension is nowhere to be found on the official Google Chrome Web Store, and
  the extension has some features typical of classic browser hijackers normally.

Albeit missing in action in the Google's Web Store for extensions, GamesQuest is very much capable of landing on a surprisingly large number of PCs via software bundling, a technique that combines legitimate software with additional tools often not revealed properly during installation. Quite a few tools slip into the system as drive-by downloads because of this technique.

Since GamesQuest arrives on your machine unnoticed, does it perform any surreptitious operations? You bet! Scarcely has this extension made its way to your system when it sets the wheels in motion to modify your basic browser settings. The latter results in:

• A new default homepage, namely 'GamesQuest[.]co.'
• An alternate default search engine is embedded in the top right search box of the browser, namely 'www[.]gamesquest[.]co[/]yhs[/]search?q=.'
• A new tab default page.

While all these changes are unlikely to do any direct damage on your machine, they may still pose a threat to your safe browsing. Whenever an extension changes the default search engine unilaterally, it is usually aimed at redirecting traffic (via the Yahoo's search engine in the case of GamesQuest) to generate some cash from advertisements popping up all along the way. These pop-ups, in particular, may lead the user to potentially unsafe sites, which is why it is essential to avoid them at any cost while browsing the Web.

How? Either by not clicking on any pop-up that shows up, or, preferably, by using a reputable tool to scan the PC for errors and any unsafe components, as well as perform a factory reset of the affected browser(s).

P.S. The GamesQuest.co extension has a fairly similar behavior to that of the now-defunct gamesquest[.]website extension.