How to remove Ad.sasternick pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Ad.sasternick pop-up notifications may appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the website you checked or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking the Ad.sasternick advertisement can result in the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Ad.sasternick popups removal in several manners, and also examining your computer for extra viruses presence.

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What are Ad.sasternick pop-ups?

Ad.sasternick popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a massive volume of earnings for adware representatives. These ads might include sometimes shocking material, or have a link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Ad.sasternick push notification

Ad.sasternick push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, low-cost and also very efficient marketing solution1. It allows the seller to attach the customers’ attention to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this chance and purchase it. Considering the very low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising instrument is a favourite thing among the advertising departments of big internet sellers.

However, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by virus creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for malevolent tricks with the popup promotions. And Ad.sasternick.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Ad.sasternick site
SiteAd.sasternick.com
HostingAS32475 SingleHop LLC
United States, Chicago
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address67.212.173.75
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorShar, Whites0ftware, Kinkylott
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Ad.sasternick virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Ad.sasternick popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is offered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people often utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these kinds of applications are unsafe, because it is very simple to integrate a Ad.sasternick malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Ad.sasternick popup virus may additionally be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the odd web page. Such sites are typically loaded with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners typically permit any kind of promos to be placed on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally receive something much more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

The statistic shows that people dislike popup advertising more than other types of promotions

Potentially undesirable programs, like Ad.sasternick pop-up virus can initiate a variety of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may show you the advertisements, where you are offered to download one more dubious program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Ad.sasternick pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Ad.sasternick adware elimination contains 2 sections. First, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards deal with the effects of its activity. The elimination process is very easy, because it can be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its large resources utilization, along with some errors that may be serious for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. In addition, a variety of trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will definitely remove the viruses from your system and also make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Ad.sasternick adware initially.

Removing Ad.sasternick popup virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

  • Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. After the installation, you will be offered to perform the Standard Scan. Approve this action.
  • Gridinsoft Anti-Malware during the scan process

  • Standard scan checks the logical disk where the system files are stored, together with the files of programs you have already installed. The scan lasts up to 6 minutes.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware scan results

  • When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Ad.sasternick malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware - After Cleaning

Now, when the computer is clean of viruses, we can proceed to the browser reset. You can do this step manually, as well as with the use of GridinSoft Anti-Malware.

Reset browser settings to default

Manual method of browser reset

To reset Edge, do the following steps :
  1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :
  2. Reseting the Edge browser

  3. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :
For Mozilla Firefox, do the next actions :
  1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :
  2. The first step to revert Mozilla Firefox

  3. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :
  4. The second step of Firefox restoration
    After choosing this option, you will see the next message :
    The last step for Firefox
If you use Google Chrome
  1. Open Settings tab, find the “Advanced” button. In the extended tab choose the “Reset and clean up” button :
  2. In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” :
  3. Finally, you will see the window, where you can see all the settings which will be reset to default :
Opera can be reset in the next way
  1. Open Settings menu by pressing the gear icon in the toolbar (left side of the browser window), then click “Advanced” option, and choose “Browser” button in the drop-down list. Scroll down, to the bottom of the settings menu. Find there “Restore settings to their original defaults” option :

  2. After clicking the “Restore settings…” button, you will see the window, where all settings, which will be reset, are shown :

When the browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your browser will definitely be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
# localhost name resolution is handle within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

Find the hosts.txt file in C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc directory. Rename this file to “hosts.old.txt” (to distinguish it from the new one), and then move the file you created on the desktop to this folder. Remove the hosts.old from this folder. Now you have your hosts file as good as new.

However, there is one trouble that makes things a lot more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Ad.sasternick pop-up ads are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, until you try to open settings again.

Reset your browser settings with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

To reset your browser with GridinSoft Anti-Malware, open the Tools tab, and click the “Reset browser settings” button.

Tools tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

You can see the list of the options for each browser. By default, they are set up in the manner which fits the majority of users. Press the “Reset” button (lower right corner). In a minute your browser will be as good as new.

Reset Browser Settings tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

The browser reset is recommended to perform through the antivirus tool by GridinSoft, because last is also able to reset the HOSTS file without any additional commands.

How to Remove Ad.sasternick Pop-ups?

Name: Ad.sasternick

Description: Ad.sasternick - a lot of users became a target for the pop-up advertisements. I have a lot of friends who literally bombed me with the questions like “how to remove Ad.sasternick.com push notifications?” or “why do Ad.sasternick.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Ad.sasternick pop-ups, which may corrupt your browser’s correct performance, and create a lot of troubles while you are working.

Operating System: Windows

Application Category: Adware

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References

  1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
  3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.

About the author

Wilbur Woodham

I was a technical writer from early in my career, and consider IT Security one of my foundational skills. I’m sharing my experience here, and I hope you find it useful.

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