The hacking of Yahoo had nothing to do with Yahoo Search functionality; besides that, the hacking occurred in 2014 and wasn't reported to the public until now.

Very, very easy to change your default search engine. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/change-your-default-search-settings-firefox

Thanks, the-edmeister:

The forum software did not allow me to say "partly solved" so I had to click the "Did not solve" button. Funny how the thing I am now looking at implies I hit the "Solved" button. Nope.

I appreciate your advice on how to change browers. That part is solved.

The main problem is not solved. According to media that I have found (who trusts media sources?), the hacker had access to browsing history, passwords, and many other personal data that I do not consider "safe" by using the browser. Maybe you know something differently than I do or the media wonks do.

When it happened versus when it was found versus when it was made public is irrelevant to my question but worthy of more reviews.

So again I thank you for the technical suggestion, and will continue to watch for ideas on how to capture and protect the animals that were let out of the barn door.

Firefox is the web browser and Yahoo is a search engine.

Google is no longer the global default search engine in the Firefox web browser as Yahoo has been the default search engine in en-US locale of desktop Firefox since 34.0 while other locales that is on www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/ have different new search engine defaults.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-and-innovation-on-the-web/

You can change the Search Engine being used on say the default about:home homepage in Firefox as mentioned in earlier reply or you can just change the Homepage.

The Yahoo thing is about the Yahoo accounts in which details of the accounts were taken back then in 2014.

The Firefox web browser itself is not affected by this in any way whether back then or now.