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As you may know, I was never able to get Web Tattoo to install into IE7. Something I have done during the removal of it and Fast Browser Search from Firefox somehow causes the install file to crash when I tried to install it in IE7. This is fine for me, but because I never could get MakeTheWebBetter installed in IE7 or IE8, I couldn’t figure out how to uninstall it and tell you how.

Over on a google forum is a link to my first post on removing Fast Browser Search from Firefox. So I subscribed to that thread and today when I checked my e-mail, I found this in it, how to remove Fast Browser Search from IE7 & IE8

Re: [Web Search Help] How do I remove “Fast Browser Search”?

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show details Oct 14 (9 days ago)

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date Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 12:35 AM
subject Re: [Web Search Help] How do I remove “Fast Browser Search”?
mailed-by confucius.bounces.google.com
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hide details Oct 14 (9 days ago)

Kundan555 has posted an answer to the question “How do I remove “Fast Browser Search”?”:

PLEASE FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS AND RESOLVE THE ISSUE FOR IE8 AND IE7.

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Please uninstall fast browser from the program and features in vista and, add and remove program in XP. Then

To fix the new tab issue you need to be comfortable using regedit. Run regedit and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs

under Tabs, clear the fastwebsearch junk and input the following as value data:

res://ieframe.dll/tabswelcome.htm or any entry related with fastbrowser listed over there.

close and restart IE.

I have been unable to verify this, however my knowledge of the registry tells me this could fix it and would be worth trying. Just be CAREFUL any time you run regedit. Messing around in the registry could really bork your system.

Here’s the links to my other Fast Browser Search removal posts

http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/08/my-web-tattoo-fast-browser-search-search-gurad-plus-uninstall-removal/

http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/08/more-my-web-tatto-removal-information/

http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/07/removing-my-web-tattoo-phone-number/

http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/06/project-web-tattoo-fast-browser-search-removal-update/

http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/06/project-web-tattoo-fast-browser-search-remove-part-1/

http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/05/remove-fast-browser-search/

While writing a new article about removing Fast Browser Search and My Web Tattoo, I was analyzing a new version of MakeTheWebBetter, which is the file I got from the MyWebTattoo site. I noticed it connected to a new site since the last time I looked at it, www.tattoodle.com Looks like they have expanded their operation to include My Space. I also found a new updated uninstall page which included Search Guard Plus, which was another new file I found that was being installed since I wrote my first uninstall guide. I am going to keep writing the new article I am working on but in the mean time, check out the new official uninstall page they have set up. It’s much better than before and like I said it includes the new programs.

Official Tattoodle Uninstall Page

It still doesn’t tell you how to fix the search redirection in Firefox so if that still plagues you, I have a guide for that here

If that still doesn’t fix it for you, and you have some basic computer skills, my next post may be the one to help you.

I uploaded MakeTheWebBetter to Threat Expert and here is the report. This is the program that is downloaded from the My Web Tattoo website and starts all this @#$! Now assuming you already tried to uninstall it using it’s uninstall program or add and remove programs in control panel and it’s still running, you can try this to remove any remains of it. Some of this information may not be for beginners. Use common sense, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, stay out of your files. Especially the registry. If you don’t know what your doing in there, you can make a real mess of your system. Now that is out of the way, here’s some information about how we can get rid of this thing.
Read the rest of this entry »

I haven’t stopped working on how to remove My Web Tattoo and the associated programs. If you have it in Firefox, then you’re kinda in luck. I have removed it from Firefox

And I found a phone number that was on the EULA page for Make The Web Better, which is the first program that is downloaded from the My Web Tattoo page. I suggest if you haven’t been able to get it removed from Internet Explorer yet, you follow the advice on their page

If you experience any problems installing and/or
uninstalling the Software Product, please contact us via email at: info@make-the-web-better.com, or call us at: 1 (800) 831-8940.

I’m still working on removing it. I can’t get it installed on IE 7 on my test computer. So I’ve been doing some other stuff like running it in a sandbox to see what it does. I’ve identified several registry keys that are affected and where it’s sending data to. I just got this info though and I’m in the middle of a computer repair job that should have been done already. So when I get some more time I’ll write up what I have found about removing it and more.

In the meant time, there is the number you can all. You can leave comments on how it went if you do call them. I’m sure others will be interested in how they helped you.

I’m afraid I have some bad news on my mission to install Web Tattoo and remove it and the Fast Browser Search redirector that takes over your web browser.. First I couldn’t find it on Facebook anymore. I don’t know if it was finally removed because of the problems it caused or maybe I’m just not searching correctly but it appears to be gone. So I did a google search for it and was able to find the website where it could be downloaded and installed. Unfortunately, I can’t get it to install into Internet Explorer 7. Every time I’ve tried to install it into IE7, I got an error and it just hangs or quits.

So it’s back the drawing board. Just writing this has given me a couple of ideas of why it won’t install this time. I haven’t given up but I’m afraid it’s already taking longer than I expected. So stay tuned and with any luck, the next update will be the solution.

UPDATE: Here is some info I found about removing fast browser search from Internet Explorer (IE) http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/10/remove-fast-browser-search-from-ie-7-ie8

One post has brought this site more traffic than anything else ever before. My article on removing Fast Browser Search. That nasty little search re-director that gets installed when you install a Facebook plug in called Web Tattoo.

The story thus far. For some reason I decided to install web tattoo. I knew it was probably going to install something else. Rule #1 – Programs on the internet that claim to be free, especially add-ons for social sites, aren’t really free. I just figured I could uninstall whatever it slipped in. After I uninstalled Web Tattoo, from FireFox and using add and remove programs in the windows control panel, and it was still redirecting my traffic to Fast Browser Search, I’d just remove it with Spybot or Ad-Aware or Hi-Jack This and remove it from the registry. However, none of these detected it and I couldn’t find any sign of it in the registry. Then I did a search on the internet and couldn’t find anything about removing it either. So I did some thinking and figured out how to remove it. Seeing how there was such a lack of articles dealing with this pest, I figured it would be the perfect thing for my blog. So I wrote this article on how I removed it from FireFox .

Next thing I know there’s a spike in the traffic coming to my little unknown blog. I was happy to learn that referrers were search engine results for “fast browser remove” and other similar queries. All of them looking for a way to take out this blasted thing. For a short time, my blog was on the first page in google if you were searching for a way to remove it. This got me pretty jazzed. I’ve had this blog for a couple years but never had much traffic before. After a couple weeks, the traffic to that article I wrote started tapering off. I was no longer in the first page or two when people searched for it. Then all the sudden it spiked again. Turns out someone on a google forum had Fast Browser Search take over their browser. Next thing I know I’m getting a ton of hits again, this time all comming from this post. Now if the people this helped would just click on my google adds, I could earn a couple cents in this tough economy

There was only one problem. My article only covered how to remove it from FireFox. Turns out there are plenty of people with Internet Explorer who have been attacked by this scourge known as Fast Browser Search. So here is what I’m going to do. Initially I was going to install Windows XP on a virtual Machine. But this would take quite some time and work before I could deliberately infect myself with Fast Browser Search. So I decided to take a short cut. After I’m done writing this, I’m going to create a new user account in windows, head over to Facebook and install Web Tattoo while using Internet Explorer. Then I’m going to figure out how to remove it and write part 2 of this article. So check back in a day or so, hopefully it won’t take me longer than that to figure out. If you would like to show some appreciation, click on my google adds, or leave me a reply. I love getting replies and hearing from you.

First I have to admit, I did something stupid. I decided to install My Web Tattoo on my Facebook page. I knew with all the spam about this addon it would try and sneak in some kind of malware. Being the “I know how to fix anything” PC Tech that I am, I pretty much dared it to install something. Which it promptly did. It changed my default search to some crap called “Fast Browser Search.”  I tried Spybot and BHO Remover, both of which found my system clean. I looked in the addons under firefox and uninstalled My Web Tatoo. Then I found that some of my search’s were still getting redirected to Fast Browser Search. So I searched my registry for Fast Browser Search and various combinations of those words. Nothing…. I searched the internet for Fast Browser Search and their site has nothing about how to remove it, big surprise. I won’t go into how it should be illegal for companies to pull this !#$!. I did find a page from the My Web Tattoo people that said you can remove it from the addons in firefox. Well I already did that, and it was still redirecting. Then I remembered the config settings in Firefox. And there it was.

Since this was such a nightmare to find and remove, I felt it was my duty to pass on this to you, my faithful readers   Type about:config in the address bar in Firefox.  In the filter, type fast. This should bring up all the instances of where Fast Browser Search has taken over. Right click on each of the Fast Browser Search entry s and select reset. This should put most of them back to google. And that’s it!

UPDATE: One of our readers, ED, has added another step

There was a few more steps i needed to do to remove it from list…in the search engine toolbar I had forgotten to click that and manage search engines as well, after the Tools/Add-on removal. Also , in the about:config area, I also typed in … fbs … in the filter section and found more fast browser search stuff in that filter set. Just in case, I reset them as well.=)

Thanks for the info Ed

MORE HELP
I figured out some more information on removing this. I can tell buy some of the replies that not everyone has seen the other posts I made later. Here is another one that might help if the above info didn’t.

more-my-web-tatto-removal-information