Some Xiaomi phone users claim that the Chrome homepage on their phones changed by itself. This issue appears to be coming up after the users have installed the MIUI 14 update. The Chrome homepage provides the capability to modify the initial page or website opened upon launching Google Chrome. For instance, if you prefer using Microsoft’s Bing search engine instead of Google as your default search engine when you open Chrome, you have the option to change the default homepage website.
Many smartphone users use Google Chrome and being able to customize the Chrome homepage is a quite useful feature, but according to the posts shared by some Xiaomi users, the Chrome homepage on their phones is set to “mintnav.com” without their knowledge.
The act of modifying a browser’s homepage has been quite popular among the malicious softwares, extending to Windows systems, where malicious software can modify Chrome settings to set a completely different website as the default homepage, rather than user’s preference. Having a new website as your homepage can be considerably annoying for users, as it results in redirection to an entirely unrelated site when making a search on web and users will not get what they look for on the internet. It’s simply waste of time and thankfully, the Mintnav is not something done by the 3rd party app.
When you visit a website, you will very likely see some ads, which help the website owner generate revenue. What’s worse is that if you don’t mind a lot what’s going on your phone, it is only a matter of time before your data is stolen if you accidentally install an APK file from the malicious website. The “Mintnav” website that appears on Xiaomi phones contains a lot of ads as well and we don’t know if these ads will bring you to a malicious website or not.
To address this issue, go to your phone’s Chrome settings and check the current homepage setting. If you realize that a different website is set, you can reconfigure it to “google.com” or set “Chrome’s homepage” option.
The Mintnav homepage is not a universal thing among Xiaomi users; it affects only some. Xiaomi has silently modified the default homepage on users’ phones as they’re having a partnership with Mintnav. You can change it back to Google or use it that way but, be careful while using the Xiaomi’s new homepage website since it displays more ads than the Google.
Source: Twitter, Mi Fans Home
