How to remove Actualnews pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Actualnews pop-up notices may appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the website you visited or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Actualnews advertisement can lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Actualnews popups clearing in a couple of manners, as well as examining your personal computer for extra viruses presence.

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What are Actualnews pop-ups?

Quick reference

For example, when a new movie is launched, you can get a popup alert immediately and get it immediately by placing the customers directly on the screen that the movie is coming from — just like Netflix. A pop-up alert can also be sent over a network or satellite signal to connect to a website or social media account that your website or social media account is associated with.

But what about those in the real world who also use popups to receive updates or “sell”, and when not getting an update? It is important to note that advertising campaigns can reach an audience not only on that specific device but also online. These people will be spending time and money trying and failing to catch a new movie even though they have watched the entire movie.

Actualnews popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a substantial amount of revenue for adware representatives. These promotions may consist of explicit information, or have a link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Actualnews push notification

Actualnews push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-cost and also very successful marketing solution1. It enables the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their site, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to purchase is available at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will surely use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favourite thing amidst the marketing teams of big internet retailers.

However, such a profitable plan could not be missed by virus creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is an excellent basis for malicious tricks with the popup ads. And Actualnews.xyz ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the Actualnews
SiteActualnews.xyz
HostingAS15317 Serverel Inc.
United States, San Jose
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address173.214.250.52
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorCaptcha, Detryu, Topfreshshop
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Actualnews virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting infected by the adware that trigger the Actualnews popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals oftentimes utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are unsafe, because it is extremely simple to include a Actualnews malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Actualnews popup virus can likewise be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange website. Such sites are generally packed with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners often permit any type of promos to be posted on their page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally receive something far more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Actualnews pop-up virus may provoke a wide range of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can display you the banners, where you are offered to get another dubious program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Actualnews pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Actualnews adware clearing consists of 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and afterwards fix the results of its activity. The elimination task is very easy, because it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its large resources utilization, along with some bugs that may be serious for some types of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Additionally, a wide range of trojan viruses are capable to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will definitely exterminate the malware from your computer and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Actualnews adware initially.

Removing Actualnews 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 Actualnews 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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will be connected the right DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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 problem that makes things much more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Actualnews pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, till you try to open settings once more.

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 Actualnews Pop-ups?

Name: Actualnews

Description: Actualnews - 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 Actualnews.xyz push notifications?” or “why do Actualnews.xyz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Actualnews 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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