Remove Addsdata Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Addsdata pop-up notices can show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the page you visited or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking the Addsdata promotion can cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of Addsdata popups clearing in various manners, as well as inspecting your computer for extra viruses existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Addsdata manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Addsdata pop-ups?

Addsdata popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a major volume of revenue for adware suppliers. These advertisements may consist of explicit composition, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Addsdata push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-priced and really effective marketing method¹. It makes it possible for the seller to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will surely use this possibility and get it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favourite thing among the marketing departments of big internet stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Addsdata.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Addsdata

How have I got the Addsdata virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that result in the Addsdata popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals regularly utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are dangerous, because it is very simple to integrate a Addsdata malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Addsdata popup malware can also be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual website. Such web pages are typically full of colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors usually approve any promos to be published on their web page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise get something far more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Addsdata pop-up virus can initiate a wide range of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups can present you the promotions, where you are offered to download another unknown application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Addsdata adware elimination contains 2 parts. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and after that deal with the consequences of its activity. The elimination procedure is very simple, since it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its large resources utilization, as well as some problems that may be serious for some categories of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus tool that will surely eliminate the viruses from your computer and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Addsdata adware first.

Removing Addsdata 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Addsdata malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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 make sure that your browser will definitely connect the proper DNS while connecting to the site you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content³:

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 issue that makes things much harder to restore, specifically without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Addsdata pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the normal, till you attempt to open settings again.

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.

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.

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.

1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I recommend it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.