Search.fastsearch.me hijacker - How to remove

Search.fastsearch.me will be your new homepage, new tab and search engine that brutally replaces the preferred settings putting itself first everywhere. After the little frustration for having to adjust to it, later Search.fastsearch.me may appeal to you as a stylish, useful and interesting search engine, that you’ll continue using with no intention to remove, until the browser will start slowing down significantly, crashing and freezing each browsing session, some of your social media accounts will become inaccessible or hacked and your bank account will start missing money, which you know you did not spend. Then you will begin to wonder if Search.fastsearch.me search engine has anything to do with these unfortunate events and you will be right.

That is because Search.fastsearch.me virus is a browser hijacker which is developed to control your online browsing sessions, alter displayed content and track information which is later shared with marketing companies. It does sound scary, yet you should not fear because if noticed and removed on time all of these terrifying experiences can be avoided. You have already done the first step for looking up information about this shady Search.fastsearch.me browser hijacker, therefore allow us to help you and show the following steps on how to remove Search.fastsearch.me virus once and for all, restoring your system back to its natural state.

What does Search.fastsearch.me virus do

Search.fastsearch.me virus can easily be mistaken with some other browser hijackers because of the similar name – Searchfast.ruFastsearchanswer.comMyfast-search.com,   Search.searchfastlm.comFastFreeSearch.com. However, in reality, they indeed are very similar and work pretty much in the same manner, with appearance and displayed as being the main difference. The principle is, that once the browser hijacker sneaks into the system and installs as an extension, it connects to crooks’ servers, downloads the rest of the malicious scripts, which allow overcoming some antivirus programs, and then modifies Windows registry and browser settings, making itself a default search engine. You can clearly notice that when you try to restore the preferred settings and still ending up with Search.fastsearch.me search engine.

search.fastsearch.me browser hijacker virus

Crooks need such control and persistence to alter the data that you see and display Online ads, which are usually regulated by website owners and etc. Moreover, some famous search engines are paying them to redirect users to their sites and bring traffic by providing results to your search queries from that provider. Search.fastsearch.me uses Yahoo search as the main search scope. Not only it is unethical to replace ads on websites of people who work hard and create content by the ones that will bring revenue to Search.fastsearch.me hijacker developers, but their online promotions are so aggressive that pages’ layouts can get distorted and you can easily become a victim of Third-party malvertising.

Affiliate marketing is a shady business no matter how much money it pays. Moreover  Search.fastsearch.me virus tracks your activity online including browsing history, search queries, visited websites, entered data, credit card numbers, credentials, address, age, logins and passwords, which will be shared with third-party marketers or Dark Net for more unreputable profit. We cannot stress enough how important it is to not use this Search.fastsearch.me browser hijacker and get rid of it immediately. If you care about your computer and privacy, the best thing you can do is to get rid of the Search.fastsearch.me virus and stick with trustworthy options.

How does Search.fastsearch.me hijacker infect systems

Search.fastsearch.me hijacker does not have its official installation website, nor an extension on the Chrome’s store or Mozilla’s Add-on market, yet it still seems like it manages to infect a quite broad variety of computers all around the world. But how? Well, there are many ways malware can spread that regular users just don’t see or know about. Search.fastsearch.me virus has its preferences and chose two main ways it disseminates – Bundling and through other malware. Bundling is a good old method, which does not fail to work, no matter how many times, computer owners were warned. Search.fastsearch.me hijacker hides inside some other program’s Setup Assistant as an additional application, which gets installed unless the user chooses Advanced mode and unselects the malware. This often happens when someone gets their software from P2P sites or Freeware distributing pages.

search.fastsearch.me hijacker virus affiliate links

There’s almost an unwritten rule that malware spreads malware, and Search.fastsearch.me hijacker has its partner in crime – Brand Thunder’s browser enhancer Websearch+. This browser extension (specifically https://home.brandthunder.com/uofcincinnati/?extension), which supposedly only changes the appearance of the browser, is known to be bringing traffic to Search.fastsearch.me. Brand Thunder overall is a very popular service, therefore, Search.fastsearch.me virus has plenty of unlucky victims, who fall for the beautiful designs. As well as this, it was noticed that a few users were infected with Search.fastsearch.me after visiting http://pt4.myip.cn/. Therefore please stay away from both of these websites for your own safety and be patient when installing new software. 

How to get rid of Search.fastsearch.me virus from your browser

Despite the pleasant and ordinary design typical to many search engines, Search.fastsearch.me virus will surprise you by the unusual persistence, giving you a hard time removing it from your browser. That is because the Malicious scripts changed all the settings to the browser hijacker’s benefit. Some users say that they were able to remove the Search.fastsearch.me hijacker by following our manual instructions below the article, but typically it takes much more than that. The persistence and the infection level depend on many conditions, such as your system’s state and vulnerability, virus variant, antivirus and etc. Yet no matter what was the cause, the first thing you need to do in order to return your system back to normal is to remove Search.fastsearch.me virus.

Like we said, sometimes uninstalling the malicious extension or removing the potentially unwanted program that is causing the compromised search engine is not enough and then you have to get a reliable antivirus/antimalware tool that is going to use all its technical skills to delete Search.fastsearch.me hijacker with all infected leftovers. We put our trust in SpyHunter and Malwarebytes because after years of testing these anti-spyware programs earned our and many other cybersecurity specialists’ trust, allowing us to solve tons of malware infections, including Search.fastsearch.me, and stay away from Rogue security antivirus.

Automatic Malware removal tools

Download Spyhunter for Malware detection
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Download Combo Cleaner for Malware detection
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In this guide, 2-viruses.com team has put all the steps that you need to follow carefully to remove Search.fastsearch.me from your Mozilla, Chrome, Edge. Again, this may not be suitable for everyone, but it is worth a try.


How to remove Search.fastsearch.me step-by-step

How to remove fastsearch.me using Windows Control Panel

Many hijackers and adware like Search.fastsearch.me hijacker install some of their components as regular Windows programs as well as additional software. This part of malware can be uninstalled from the Control Panel. To access it, do the following.
  • Start→Control Panel (older Windows) or press Windows Key→Search and enter Control Panel and then press Enter (Windows 8, Windows 10). Open Control Panel by searching for it in the Start menu.
  • Choose Uninstall Program (if you don't see it, click in the upper right next to "View by" and select Category). In Control Panel, select Uninstall a program.
  • Go through the list of programs and select entries related to fastsearch.me . You can click on "Name" or "Installed On" to reorder your programs and make Search.fastsearch.me hijacker easier to find. Find the program that you need to uninstall.
  • Click the Uninstall button. If you're asked if you really want to remove the program, click Yes. Click the Uninstall button after selecting the program to uninstall. Then click Yes.
  • In many cases anti-malware programs are better at detecting related parasites, thus I recommend installing Spyhunter to identify other programs that might be a part of this infection. Spyhunter marking a program and its components as low-threat malware.

How to remove fastsearch.me from macOS

Delete Search.fastsearch.me hijacker from your applications.
  1. Open Finder.
  2. In the menu bar, click Go.
  3. Select Applications from the dropdown.
  4. Find the fastsearch.me app.
  5. Select it and right-click it (or hold the Ctrl and click the left mouse button).
  6. In the dropdown, click Move to Bin/Trash. You might be asked to provide your login password.
Open Applications and delete unwanted apps.

TopHow To remove Search.fastsearch.me hijacker from Google Chrome:

  • Click on the 3 horizontal lines icon on a browser toolbar and Select More Tools→Extensions
    Extensions
  • Select all malicious extensions and delete them.
    Remove extensions
  • Click on the 3 horizontal lines icon on a browser toolbar and Select Settings
    Open settings
  • Select Manage Search engines
    Manage search engines
  • Remove unnecessary search engines from the list
    Delete search engines
  • Go back to settings. On Startup choose Open blank page (you can remove undesired pages from the set pages link too).
  • If your homepage was changed, click on Chrome menu on the top right corner, select Settings. Select Open a specific page or set of pages and click on Set pages.
    Set pages
  • Delete malicious search websites at a new Startup pages window by clicking “X” next to them.
    Delete start pages

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings

If you are still experiencing any issues related to Search.fastsearch.me hijacker, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

  • Click on a Chrome’s menu button (three horizontal lines) and select Settings.
  • Scroll to the end of the page and click on theReset browser settings button.
    Resset settings
  • Click on the Reset button on the confirmation box.
    Reset approve

If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.

How To remove Search.fastsearch.me hijacker from Firefox:Top

  • Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Mozilla window and select the “Add-ons” icon (Or press Ctrl+Shift+A on your keyboard).
    Select add-on
  • Go through Extensions and Addons list, remove everything Search.fastsearch.me hijacker related and items you do not recognise. If you do not know the extension and it is not made by Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, Oracle or Adobe then you probably do not need it.
    Remove add-on
  • If your homepage was changed, click on the Firefox menu in the top right corner, select Options → General. Enter a preferable URL to the homepage field and click Restore to Default.
    Restore default
(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings If you are still experiencing any issues related to fastsearch.me, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.
  • Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Mozilla Firefox window. Click on the Help button.
    Help button
  • ChooseTroubleshooting Information on the Help menu.
    Troubleshooting
  • Click on theReset Firefox button.
    Refresh firefox
  • Click on the Reset Firefox button on the confirmation box. Mozilla Firefox will close and change the settings to default.
    Refresh firefox approve
If the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program to identify malicious entries.

How to remove Search.fastsearch.me hijacker from Microsoft Edge:Top

  • Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Microsoft Edge window. Select “Extensions”.
Open the menu and choose Extensions.
  • Select all malicious extensions and delete them.
Press Remove for the extensions you want to remove
  • Click on the three-dot menu on the browser toolbar and Select Settings
Edge new open the three-dot menu and choose settings.
  • Select Privacy and Services and scroll down. Press on Address bar.
Edge new Open Address bar settings.
  • Choose Manage search engines.
Edge new choose manage search engines.
  • Remove unnecessary search engines from the list: open the three-dot menu and choose Remove.
Edge new choose remove for unwanted search engines.
  • Go back to Settings. Open On start-up.
  • Delete malicious search websites at Open specific page or pages by opening the three-dot menu and clicking Delete.
Edge new remove startup pages. (Optional) Reset your browser’s settings If you are still experiencing any issues related to Search.fastsearch.me hijacker, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings
  • Click on Edge's menu button and select Settings. Click on the Reset Settings button on the left.
  • Press the Restore settings to their default values option.
Edge new restore settings.
  • Click on the Reset button on the confirmation box.
Edge new restore settings comfirmation. If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.

How to remove Search.fastsearch.me hijacker from Safari:Top

Remove malicious extensions
  • Click on Safari menu on the top left corner of the screen. Select Preferences.
    Open preferences
  • Select Extensions and uninstall fastsearch.me and other suspicious extensions.
    Extensions
  • If your homepage was changed, click on Safari menu on the top left corner of the screen. Select Preferences and choose General tab. Enter preferable URL to the homepage field.
    Reset homepage
(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings(older versions) If you are still experiencing any issues related to Search.fastsearch.me hijacker, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.
  • Click on Safari menu on the top left corner of the screen. Select Reset Safari…
    Choose reset
  • Select which options you want to reset (usually all of them come preselected) and click on the Reset button.
    Reset
If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.

Removal guides in other languages

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