Remove Freshaudio.net Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Freshaudio.net pop-up notifications can show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the page you went to or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Freshaudio.net ad may lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Freshaudio.net popups clearing in multiple manners, and also examining your PC for other malware presence.

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What are Freshaudio.net pop-ups?

Freshaudio.net popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a substantial amount of earnings for adware distributors. These promotions may consist of sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Freshaudio.net push notification

Freshaudio.net push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, affordable and extremely efficient marketing method1. It allows the seller to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is available at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising departments of huge online stores.

Nonetheless, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Option to show the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware attack is a perfect basis for malevolent tricks with the popup advertisements. And Freshaudio.net promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Freshaudio.net
Site Freshaudio.net
Hosting AS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 178.128.246.195
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Music, Handkeight, Cleanupallthreats
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Freshaudio.net virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that lead to the Freshaudio.net popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can likewise be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people oftentimes make use of the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of applications are risky, because it is quite simple to integrate a Freshaudio.net malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Freshaudio.net popup virus can also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the unusual site. Such websites are in most cases full of intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically approve any kind of promos to be published on their page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can also get something a lot more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Freshaudio.net popup virus can provoke a lot of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups can present you the ads, where you are offered to download another strange application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also chosen as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they can 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 deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Freshaudio.net pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Freshaudio.net adware elimination consists of 2 parts. First, we need to deal with the malware, and then deal with the effects of its action. The elimination task is quite simple, because it may be executed 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 huge resources utilization, along with some errors that can be pivotal for some categories of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses have the ability to disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will definitely exterminate the malware from your personal computer and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Freshaudio.net adware first.

Removing Freshaudio.net 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 Freshaudio.net 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 connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that 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.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that makes things much harder to repair, especially without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Freshaudio.net pop-up ads are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, up until you attempt to open settings one more time.

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 Freshaudio.net Pop-ups?

Name: Freshaudio.net

Description: Freshaudio.net - 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 Freshaudio.net push notifications?” or “why do Freshaudio.net pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Freshaudio.net 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 overview and the reasons why I advise 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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