Faststep02.club Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Faststep02.club pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the website you checked or opening your browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Faststep02.club advertisement may lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Faststep02.club popups removal in multiple manners, as well as examining your PC for extra viruses existence.

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What are Faststep02.club pop-ups?

Faststep02.club popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a major amount of profit for adware suppliers. These advertisements may contain sometimes shocking composition, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Faststep02.club push notification

Faststep02.club push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, affordable and very productive advertising solution1. It allows the seller to attach the customers’ attention to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will surely use this possibility and buy it. Considering the incredibly low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favourite thing amidst the marketing teams of large online retailers.

Nonetheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup ads. And Faststep02.club ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Faststep02.club site
SiteFaststep02.club
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address157.245.79.75
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorFaststep03, Faststep04, Ne08
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Faststep02.club virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the Faststep02.club popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals oftentimes make use of the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these types of applications are risky, because it is extremely simple to build in a Faststep02.club malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Faststep02.club popup virus can likewise be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the odd web page. Such sites are typically loaded with bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually accept any kind of promos to be published on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise get something a lot more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Faststep02.club pop-up virus may cause a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications may present you the promotions, where you are offered to download another unknown program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these ads, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Faststep02.club pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Faststep02.club adware clearing consists of 2 parts. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and then deal with the results of its activity. The removal procedure is very easy, because it can be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its large resources usage, as well as some defects that may be crucial for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Moreover, various trojan viruses have the ability to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will definitely erase the viruses from your PC and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Faststep02.club adware first.

Removing Faststep02.club 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 Faststep02.club 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 ensure that your web browser will be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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 the things much more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Faststep02.club pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, till 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 Faststep02.club Pop-ups?

Name: Faststep02.club

Description: Faststep02.club - 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 Faststep02.club push notifications?” or “why do Faststep02.club pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Faststep02.club 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 ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I advise it for malware removal.
  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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