recently I seem to have acquired an unwelcome guest, appearing now and again during searches. I use Firefox and a couple of anti spy/malware programmes but when I think it has gone, up pops crawler.com again.....

Any ideas of how to get rid of the thing ?

Thanks.

Google for "malwarebytes antimalware", and try that against it.

Your other alternative is to "Manage Add-ins" in your browser, and disable anything looking suspiciously like something you don't need.

It doesn't appear to be malware more a web portal and search engine:
Crawler.com - Games, Screensavers, Wallpapers, eCards and more!

Crawler.com - Help

and

Remove Crawler, removal instructions

NB malwarebytes is worth having anyway, and link 2 says it will get rid of crawler for you.

Check the firefox add ons in case one of them automatically installs the toolbar unless you untick the box. This is a favourite for the Yahoo toolbar as well.

Many thanks for the ideas folks.

Whilst I do realise that crawler is not the traditional 'malware' type item, I object to these things appearing,uninvited, on my pc !

Hence my annoyance.

It still appears, from time to time, by the way, despite all efforts to stop it !

I know of several annoying crawlers (some even in government), but none called .com.



SD

Did you have SpywareTerminator installed at any stage?
This can install a toolbar. Crawler, no less, if you activate a module called "WSG" (web security guard).
The applications should be easy enough to uninstall using the control panel, or the browser add-on manager.
Not a rogue, but I definitely stopped using it a year or two ago, because the install of the toolbar was default-install. (ie, you have to opt-out, and then WSG doesn't work. Waste of time, anyway.)

There are a few applications around that will install a toolbar, Ccleaner, for example.