Aboutsmartcook Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Aboutsmartcook pop-ups appear when you do not expect, distracting and annoying you. However, they are slightly more than just notifications – their essence is surely malicious, and they can install other malware to your computer. In this post, I will show you how to remove Aboutsmartcook pop-up advertisements and explain how to avoid them in the future.

Any time you interact with Aboutsmartcook pop-ups will be ineffective at best. At worst, the websites it can throw you to may introduce malware to your system. These pop-up advertisements may also promote fake online shopping websites which will take your money and payment info. The latter generally ends up with losing all the money you have on the exposed card.

What are Aboutsmartcook pop-up advertisements?

Brief summary of the Aboutsmartcook.com pop-ups:

Aboutsmartcook pop-ups, as opposed, are related to unlegit websites. You will commonly see the proposition to turn them on following the redirection from another page. There’s nothing bad in redirecting unless they throw you to such a dubious place. In this case, turning on pop-up ads is offered under the guise of the anti-DDoS check-up. In other cases, the websites can refuse to show you the content unless you enable these pop-ups. These requirements should already raise suspicion, as websites usually feature a more convenient anti-bot mechanism. Spectating this offer should be the reason to leave the site doubtlessly. Sometimes, even when you click “Allow”, you will not get to the site – it has only a landing page with the offer to turn on the pop-up notifications.

How does this work?

The majority of browsers support turning on pop-ups from websites. Websites, on the other hand, may send out notifications with the content of their choice. It can be a promotion of the page published on this website, or a promotion of the page of their partner. As a result, you may see the pop-up from site X, but opening it will redirect you to site Y – because a referral link to the latter was built in.

The banners these criminals show are paid under the pay-per-view model. It usually provides a miserable commission for one viewer, but when you have hundreds of users and make it hundreds of times every day – that is a way bigger sum. Even though the majority of these ads giving no result at all, it may still give all the participants a lot of profit.

Are Aboutsmartcook pop-up ads dangerous?

Yes, they are. Initially, they can look non-threatening – just a colourful pop-up that appears from time to time. However, the contents of this window differ sharply from what you generally see in push notifications. Aboutsmartcook.com site is ruled by fraudsters, who intendedly show hundreds of irrelevant ads in pop-ups. They also never follow any common sense and can launch sporadic pop-up ads into a hurricane of banners. For weak computers, that may be enough to cause performance issues. But problems are not over at this point.

How to remove Aboutsmartcook pop-ups?

Initially, you should reset your browser settings. You can do that in manual or automated way. The former, obviously, takes more time to complete and can be somewhat complicated if you have never done that. Automated supposes the use of anti-malware programs that can reset all browser settings at once.

Reset your browsers manually

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 browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will connect the right DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines²:

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.

Scan your system for possible viruses

Once the scan is complete, you will see the detections or a notification about a clean system. Proceed with pressing the Clean Up button (or OK when nothing is detected).

1. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.