Ask Toolbar for Firefox FAQ

What is the Ask Toolbar?

The Ask Toolbar is a tremendously powerful and totally customizable toolbar that installs directly onto your Web browser. Its design allows you to:

• Search the Web from anywhere online
• Personalize your search experience with saved locations, your local news and more
• Save images, web pages and searches, and access them right from the toolbar
• It also comes with easy search box for maps and business listings

The Ask Toolbar is free to download and free to use.

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Does the Ask Toolbar track where I go on the Internet?

No, the Ask Toolbar does not monitor or report information about where you are traveling or what you do on Web sites.

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Is the Ask Toolbar "spyware"?

NO! The Ask Toolbar does not collect any personal information and is completely "spyware"-free and "adware"-free. Period. The Ask Toolbar was specifically designed to provide a great user experience free of spyware, adware, direct marketing, data collection or other similar activities. In order to achieve that goal:

• The toolbar software DOES NOT collect personal information of any kind, period. No email address, registration or other information is required to use the product. No zip code, no email, no member name, and no password. Unlike many other products, we do not even attempt to collect data upon startup as a requirement of use.
• The toolbar software DOES NOT monitor the websites visited by the end user, collect or in any manner report any information about what sites an end users visits (or any clickstream activity), nor does it monitor or scrape information when you are on other sites.
• The toolbar software DOES NOT serve or facilitate so-called "contextual advertising" or pop-up ads. Many applications are identified as spyware because they monitor end-user Internet usage and serve contextual pop-ups. The Ask Toolbar does not engage in any such practices.
• In short, the Ask Toolbar provides a superior search experience on an anonymous basis and without any additional monitoring, contextual ads or other nuisances.

To provide our users with access to a range of high quality search engines AND to enable each user to customize his or her experience:

• The toolbar software DOES install a browser plug-in that enables users to send a search query for processing by Ask.com using one or more of its search engines.
• The toolbar software DOES send a small configuration request to the Ask.com website upon start-up of the browser. This request is typically 5k in size and is made to confirm that the toolbar is properly configured in accordance with users' settings and preferences.
• The toolbar software DOES enable the Ask Toolbar to transmit updates to the software upon notice to the user. We recognize that you may be sensitive to the issue of updating. Like many major online software distributors - including AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, Real, etc. - we have designed updateable software in order to ensure that it can be kept current and in working order as changes may be made to Internet protocols, browser software, etc. Pursuant to our End User License Agreement, we guarantee that no update to the product or fix will ever be made in violation of the terms of the Agreement - which means that even if we do update the software, we will not deploy any software or technology that would monitor the user's habits, collect personal information, or otherwise violate the commitments we have made to provide a product that is spyware-free and adware-free, unless we have received express agreement from the user.

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How does the Highlight feature work?

The highlight feature easily allows you to locate your search terms on the search results page(s). Clicking the "Highlight" button will highlight all your search terms in yellow on the search results page.

If you elect to keep the "Highlight" turned on, it will highlight those search terms on all web (HTML) pages whether they are accessed through the Ask Toolbar, your web browser, or other sources. The highlight feature is a toggle switch that may be turned "on" or "off" simply by clicking on it. If you would like to highlight other terms on the web page, type the word(s) you would like highlighted in the search box (do not click the "Enter" key) and click the highlight button again; the new term will automatically be highlighted.

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How do I add/remove buttons?

To add or remove buttons click on the Ask.com logo and select "Add & Remove buttons" from the Toolbar Menu. This will open a secondary drop-down list with all the available Toolbar buttons. You can turn the buttons "on" or "off" by clicking on the item in the menu. A check mark to the left of the icons indicates which items are turned "on."

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What is MyStuff?

MyStuff is a powerful tool to upload, organize and share images and web pages. Select the "MyStuff" menu and click "Save" to save the page you are viewing in MyStuff. You can also right click to save any link or image you see. For even more convenience, add one-click buttons to the toolbar. With MyStuff, you can add notes to your saved links or images, publish them to the web or share them with your friends and family. MyStuff is also a great way to back up your bookmarks or favorites. If you don't have a MyStuff account yet, signing up is free and only takes one minute.

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Can I search my desktop and email as well?

Yes. Enter a keyword or phrase related to the information you need. It can be a text snippet from one of your documents on your computer, an email address or the name of a photo. In the search menu select "Search Computer" or "Search Email" and Ask Toolbar will quickly scan all your documents and provide results that match your query. The first time you use this feature, you will be asked to download and install Ask Desktop Search.

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What are the news headlines that show in the news button?

Each time you click on the arrow of the news button, the Ask Toolbar will fetch the latest top stories and display them inside the menu. Click any headline to read the full story. You can also select a news category like Sports or Business to read all the latest news for this category.

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How do I delete my search history?

To clear your search history from the drop-down text box in Ask Toolbar, click on the Ask.com logo to open the drop-down menu. Select the "Clear History" option. This will clear all the previous searches from the drop-down box. The history displayed in your Search History button menu is stored in MyStuff. To clear it, select the menu arrow on the right of the Search History button, and select "My Search History". This will take you to MyStuff. Look for the button that says "Clear Search History". Note that MyStuff only records your search history if you have chosen so through the settings pages.

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What is "Zoom"?

The "Zoom" button allows you to enlarge or shrink a page you are viewing. All text and images can be magnified to 125%, 150% and 200%, or reduced to 75% and 50%. Note that some content like embedded video and dynamic objects cannot be resized.

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What is the "Sign In" button?

Click Sign In to access your Ask.com personalized tools and services, like setting up your default locations, search preferences and using your very own storage space on MyStuff for your photos and saved results. Once you are "signed in", this button will change into a "Sign out" button, clicking which will direct you to the MyStuff sign-out page.

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My Toolbar is missing! How can I bring it back?

If you're unable to see the Toolbar in your Firefox browser, first make sure that the Toolbar was installed properly. Select "Tools" > "Extensions" in your Firefox browser. You should see "Ask Toolbar" listed? If not, go to toolbar.ask.com and click "Download". If the Toolbar is listed as an installed program in your Firefox Extensions menu, please close all windows and reopen them.

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Mozilla, Netscape and other Gecko browsers

Current version of the Ask Toolbar has not been certified for Mozilla, Netscape or other Gecko based browsers. Please check toolbar.ask.com again for updates to support Mozilla and Netscape.

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How do I report a problem?

To report a problem with your Toolbar, please use our customer service form. Be sure to include your Operating system (e.g., Windows XP) and browser version (e.g., Firefox 1.0) to help us better serve you.

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