Cats and Catapults Toolbar (Removal Guide)

What is Cats and Catapults Toolbar?

What should you know about Cats and Catapults Toolbar?

Cats and Catapults Toolbar is a free and legitimate software that is described as “A FREE Cat-Themed Online Game From One Chrome New Tab.” This program appears in a form of a Chrome extension, and it presents itself this way: “Build a castle and recruit an army of cats. Includes helpful extras like weather & more games.” However, once you install this extension, it sets your homepage and a new tab page to Ask Search, and also attaches a new toolbar to Google Chrome menu bar. At first glance, such changes do not seem to be suspicious.

However, security experts warn users NOT to trust this program as it is believed to be created only for advertising purposes. As we have noticed that many users on Chrome Web Store complain about the functionality of this extension, and also after we have found series of complaints that users cannot remove this extension easily, we have decided to investigate this program. We have looked through the Cats and Catapults Toolbar’s Terms of Use, and Privacy Policy documents, and we have found some very suspicious details. Take a look at these statements:

MS Products are exposed to various security issues, and should be regarded as unsecure. […]

MS Products may provide access to search results or other links to Third Party Partner websites or resources. MS has no control over such sites and resources […]

MS shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with use of or reliance on any such Content […] goods or services available on or through any such site or resource.

Shortly said, this program admits that it provides links to third-party websites and the content on them might be insecure. Be careful if you decide to use the search engine that this toolbar provides – you might receive sponsored search outcomes, which may cause Cats and Catapults redirects to third-party websites. However, that is not the last suspicious statement on these documents.

We may collect information from you that may identify you, such as your name, address, email address, and telephone number and anonymous Information, such as the number of your page views, link clicks, and login times. […] We may share your information with our authorized service providers that perform certain services on our behalf. […] we may share aggregated information we collect, under any of the above circumstances, with third parties, including advisors, advertisers and investors […]

These statements speak for themselves. If you do not reveal information about your browsing activity, you should remove this program from your computer. We have provided a manual Cats and Catapults Toolbar removal guide on the following page.

How can Cats and Catapults Toolbar be installed on my computer?

If you are fond of such and similar games, you may run into CatsAndCatapults official website and install this app manually, but that is really a rare case. This toolbar can find its way to your computer system via bundling technique. The developers of this software also disclose this fact in the Terms of Use document:

The MS Products may […] be integrated into, bundled, or be provided in connection with third-party services, feeds and/or content.

Probably you have already heard about ‘bundling’ distribution method, but in case some people are not familiar with it, it must be noted that ‘bundling’ mainly serves for spreading various toolbars, plug-ins, add-ons or extensions. A bundled software holds several optional applications with it, but you can always refuse to install optional components by selecting Advanced or Custom installation mode. You just need to deselect the agreements to install unfamiliar apps.

Recently, the developer of this program contacted us asking us to remove this post from 2-spyware.com website. We believe that we shouldn’t do that as long as programs that we offer for the removal of Cats and Catapults Toolbar can detect it and help users to remove it from the system. As it is mentioned under each of download buttons, we ARE affiliated with these anti-malware programs, and while some of them are free, others can remove a virus only after purchasing them. These mentions fully fulfill each of the requirements of FTC.

Nevertheless, we have recently decided to make a revision of this and other posts that are related to this developer. We claim that all of them are described properly.

How to uninstall it?

To remove this toolbar from your PC, follow the guidelines below:

• Uninstall programs that are related to Cats and Catapults from your computer:

1. Click Start → Control Panel → Uninstall a Program.
2. When in the Add/Remove Programs/Uninstall a Program, look for Cats and Catapults Toolbar and other programs that are unknown to you.
3. Click ‘Uninstall’ and then OK to save the changes.

• Reset your web browser:

Google Chrome:
1. Open Google Chrome, click on the menu icon (top right corner) and select ‘Tools’ -> ‘Extensions’.
2. Here, select unfamiliar plugins (Cats and Catapults Toolbar, MyWay, MyWebSearch, etc.) and select trash icon to delete these entries.
3. In order to change your homepage, click on menu icon, choose ‘Settings’ -> ‘On startup’ section -> ‘set pages’.
4. Here, eliminate myway.com by clicking on the “X” and enter your preferred website.
5. In order to change your default search engine, click on the menu icon -> ‘Settings’ -> ‘Search’ section.
6. Here, click ‘Manage Search Engines…’ and add your preferred domain name.