Remove Free-master Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Free-master pop-up notifications may show up out of the blue, covering the subject of the website you visited or opening your web browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Free-master promotion may lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Free-master popups removal in various manners, and also inspecting your system for other viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Free-master manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Free-master pop-ups?

Free-master popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a significant amount of revenue for adware distributors. These ads may contain explicit composition, or have a web link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Free-master push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, low-cost and really productive marketing method¹. It permits the vendor to link the buyers’ attention to their website, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to purchase is provided at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this chance and buy it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a favourite thing amidst the advertising departments of huge online retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malicious manipulations with the popup ads. And Free-master.xyz promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the Free-master site

How have I got the Free-master virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Free-master popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals regularly utilize the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different utilities that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of programs are dangerous, since it is very easy to build in a Free-master 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.

Free-master popup malware may likewise be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual web page. Such websites are in most cases packed with intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often accept any type of promotions to be posted on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally receive something a lot more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Free-master pop-up virus can provoke a lot of troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can present you the advertisements, where you are offered to download another strange program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these ads, 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 antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Free-master pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Free-master adware clearing consists of 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that repair the consequences of its action. The elimination process is really simple, due to the fact that it may be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its significant resources usage, as well as some problems that may be crucial for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely erase the malware from your computer and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Free-master adware first.

Removing Free-master 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Free-master malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will definitely connect the right DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text³:

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.

Nevertheless, there is one problem that makes the things a lot harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Free-master pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, up until you try to open settings once 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.

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.

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 Free-master Pop-ups?

Name: Free-master

Description: Free-master - 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 Free-master.xyz push notifications?” or “why do Free-master.xyz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Free-master 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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1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.