Firefox. search engine keeps reverting to Startpage

[Kilz]

Let me start out by saying I am not a newbie. I am a long time Linux user that started out on Ubuntu Breezy Badger.

Mint Mate 18 64bit

The Problem. The search engine preferences keep getting changed back to Startpage. I have changed them to Google. I have deleted all the other search engines including Startpage. I am not sure when the change happens, but I find that my choice is gone and Startpage has taken its place. No one else uses this computer.

Any suggestions to stop this happening?

[Lemongrass38]

Have you tried creating a new Firefox profile?

[Kilz]

That is one of the things I tried and it still did it. This has been going on for a few weeks. While it is a minor issue, its a nagging one. I have done an extensive search and cant find the answer. It may just be faster to move to another distro with Mate.

[Cosmo.]

It is strange, that you get Startpage in a new FF-profile, as this search engine is not installed by default.

Create a fresh new user account and check there. (This is not a solution,, but an investigation step.)

[Kilz]

I was hoping for a fast fix. The truth is I'm tired of of fooling with it. Thanks for the help, but I got rid of Mint last night and put Ubuntu Mate in. I thought I would never install Ubuntu again after the Unity bannings. All it took was an hour to setup everything as I had it thanks to my partition scheme.

[Cosmo.]

A new account would have cost you a few minutes (if at all), but this your decision. Please understand, that I cannot follow your consequence.

[1Crimson1]

In case anyone else views this thread, I was able to fix this by purging Firefox, then reinstalling the browser.

sudo apt-get purge firefox
sudo apt-get install firefox

I'm not sure if this was caused by Malware on the system, or a bad extension/plugin, or was some kind of by-product of coming off of the Beta channel for Firefox, but it only effected Firefox. Chrome, Chromium, and Opera where fine.