Click Subscribe Calendar Spam

Click Subscribe

Click Subscribe is an unwanted app that attaches to the browser and generates ads and page-redirects during the user’s online sessions. Click Subscribe also introduces various changes in the browser, some of which might make the system unstable or expose it to malware.

If you have encountered Click Subscribe in your browser, some of the first things you’ve probably noticed are changes made to the starting page and the new-tab page of the browser, as well as to its default search engine tool. The toolbar of the browser could also have been affected by Click Subscribe by either having been replaced entirely or by having had some new buttons added to it. Such unwelcome and unauthorized changes can take place in pretty much any browsing program that you might have in the computer. Even some of the safest browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge can get such an app installed in them without the user’s informed approval. In fact, those are the browsers that get the biggest number of hijackers because they are the ones that most people use.

What is the goal of Click Subscribe?

Unlike real malware programs and viruses such as Trojans, Worms, Spyware, or Ransomware, it is not typical for an app like Click Subscribe to cause any direct harm to the computer it is installed in. The type of apps to which Click Subscribe belongs is known as browser hijackers and hijacking the computer’s main browser is what they do. This means that they take over the settings of the browsing program, introduce some changes to them, and then use those changes to spam the screen with different kinds of online advertisements and page-redirects. The end-goal is to make money through online advertising. Understandably, the more the users who get exposed to this form of aggressive advertising, the greater the financial profit for the creators of the hijackers. This is why these apps are so common and why they typically get installed in stealthy ways, using file-bundles, spam messages, clickbait download buttons, and other similar techniques.

Nevertheless, regardless of how irritating and obnoxious an app like Click Subscribe could be, it would still typically not cause harm to the system. That being said, the presence of a browser hijacker in your Windows computer could actually contribute to a decrease in your PC’s overall safety, which is something that you must not ignore if you wish to keep the computer away from harm.

Potential dangers related to browser hijackers

The biggest security problem that could come from an application like Click Subscribe is the possibility of you getting exposed to questionable online locations and content that might be unsafe. This is mainly due to the endless spam with adverts, pop-ups, automatic page-redirects, and other similar forms of aggressive advertisement. As you probably know, many of the ads found on the Internet are actually disguised links to questionable sites, some of which might even be hosted by hackers and used for Ransomware, Trojan Horse, or Spyware distribution. In other cases, you might land on phishing pages that try to obtain sensitive details about you by presenting themselves as legitimately-looking sites. To avoid such encounters (or at least decrease their likelihood), we strongly recommend that you take a look at the removal steps below and follow them in order to uninstall Click Subscribe and remove any data it might have left in your computer.

SUMMARY:

Name	Click Subscribe Calendar Spam/Virus
Type	Browser Hijacker

A common complaint that users have about Click Subscribe Calendar Spam is that it automatically adds new events to the user’s Calendar app, thus spamming it. Though generally not harmful, this could get quite intrusive and so must be stopped. Here is one way you can potentially prevent the undesirable app from spamming your Calendar.

1. Go to iCloud.com and log into your account there.
2. Now tap on the Calendar app and open its settings (the gear icon).
3. Next, tap on Preferences and then on Advanced.
4. Look at the Invitation settings – since you are getting spam Calendar invitations, you will probably see that the In-app invitations option is the one that’s enabled. To stop the spam, change the setting to Email to *your email address* and enter your email address in the empty field.
   
5. Lastly, select Save to confirm the changes you have made to your Calendar settings.

Note that this is not going to fully stop Click Subscribe Calendar Spam spamming you – it’s just going to redirect its spam attempts to your email address so that you stop getting unwanted notifications from your Calendar and so that events stop getting added to it automatically. However, you will get spam emails from Click Subscribe Calendar Spam to the email address you’ve provided. Because of this, we would suggest that you enter an email address that you rarely use so that your main one isn’t constantly receiving spam messages from the hijacker.

If the spam emails don’t bother you, you don’t need to go further into the guide. However, if you want to fully stop Click Subscribe Calendar Spam from targeting you or clean any data it may have left on your device, we suggest you complete the next steps as well.

If you are in your browser and the hijacker has spawned pop-ups or banners on your screen, you will first need to close them. Usually, most pop-ups would have a Close/X button that you can tap on to close them. However, this button may not always work as intended and tapping on it would often count as a direct tap on the pop-up itself and will redirect you to some site that the hijacker is attempting to popularize. Since getting redirected by a browser-hijacker is never preferable as it may expose your device to harm, we would advise you against trying to close the pop-ups on your display by interacting with their Close/X button. Instead, double-tap on your Home Screen button and then on Close All Apps. This should close any pop-ups that are shown on your display.

If the hijacker somehow prevents you from doing this and won’t let you close its pop-ups, you can always just Force Quit and Reboot your device. Simple hold down the Power Button and wait for the Power Off  to appear on your screen and then swipe downwards to power down the device.

After that, start the device again and proceed with the following steps without opening your browser or any other apps aside from the ones needed to complete the next steps. It may also help if you turn of your Internet connection to ensure that the pop-ups don’t obstruct you while completing rest of the guide.

Once there are no more pop-ups on your screen, you should take a very careful look at what apps you have on your iPhone, paying especially close attention to the ones that got installed right before the spam disturbances started to take place. More often than not, the reason for getting browser hijackers on iPhones is the installation of a low-quality app that has a browser hijacker element hidden in its code. If you suspect which one of your recently installed apps may be behind this, tap on it and hold down that tap until a small X button appears over its icon. Tap on that X button and this will uninstall the app from your device. If there are several apps, any one of which could be causing the disruptions, uninstall them one by one until you find out which app is responsible for the spam so that you can then re-install the other ones.

Note that it is very rare for apps from the official App Store to have hijacker code in them so. Software that causes unwanted and/or unusual behavior of iPhone devices is almost always downloaded from third-party sources that have less strict security standards.

Regardless of whether completing the previous steps have resolved the problem for you or not, it is still advisable to check your browser settings and to clean your browsing data and history for good measure.

First, go to Settings, find the icon for Safari, and tap on it to reveal the settings for the browser. In there, the Block Pop-ups option and the Fraudulent Website Warning should be enabled. If they aren’t at the moment, enable them to stop unwanted pop-ups from showing up on your screen and to make Safari warn you whenever you are about to open or be redirected to a potentially hazardous web address.

Next, find the Clear History and Browsing Data option and select to clean your browser but note that this action will log you out of the online accounts that you are logged in from Safari.

Since most browser hijackers are usually not limited only to Safari, we suggest that you repeat the current step with any other browsers you may have installed on your iPhone (Chrome, Firefox, etc.).

In the rare cases where the previous four steps are not enough to solve the issue with this hijacker, doing a Factory Reset of your device could serve as a last resort option. To some, this may sound a bit excessive but performing a Factory Reset isn’t as huge a deal as lots of people may think and it is almost guaranteed to take care of any hijacker-related problems that you may be experiencing. As long as you do it correctly, there should be negative consequences resulting from it.

Before you Factory Reset your device, you must ensure that no valuable data gets lost in the process. Fortunately, iOS all iOS modern iOS devices have a built-in feature that automatically backs up user data. You just need to make sure that this feature is enabled on your device before you proceed. To do this, go to Settings and tap on your Apple ID profile. Now, select iCloud and see which of your apps are getting backed up on iCloud. Normally, iCloud backing up should be enabled for all of the apps from that list. If some of the apps you see there are not getting automatically backed up, toggle on the button next to them to enable their iCloud backing up and proceed with to the Factory Reset.

Important Note!: Some of you may be wondering why we didn’t mention using the iCloud Backup option to manually create a full backup of your whole device. The reason doing this is not suggested in the current situation is because the malware currently residing in the device may also get backed up and when you restore your data from the backup, it could enter your iPhone once more, thus defeating the whole purpose of performing a Factory Reset.

Now, onto the Factory Reset itself, to complete it, go back to Settings and this time tap on General. Do some scrolling down until you find an option labeled Reset and select it. The iOS of your device will ask you several times if you are certain that you want to perform this action – confirm that this is indeed what you want to do until the Factory Reset process begins. Then wait for everything to complete and set up your phone’s settings in the same way you did when you first bought it. After everything is done, there should be no trace left of the hijacker on your device.