How to remove Adsfreewatch.net pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Adsfreewatch.net pop-up notifications can appear out of the blue, covering the post of the site you visited or opening your web browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Adsfreewatch.net advertisement may trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guide of Adsfreewatch.net popups removal in several ways, as well as inspecting your computer for additional viruses presence.

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What are Adsfreewatch.net pop-ups?

Adsfreewatch.net popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a massive volume of profit for adware distributors. These ads might include explicit material, or have a link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Adsfreewatch.net push notification

Adsfreewatch.net push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, low-priced and also really effective marketing instrument1. It enables the seller to link the customers’ attention to their site, 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 desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and buy it. Taking into consideration the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a favorite thing amongst the marketing teams of huge internet retailers.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Option to show the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware invasion is a perfect basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup ads. And Adsfreewatch.net advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Adsfreewatch.net site
SiteAdsfreewatch.net
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address188.114.96.3
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNews, Todaysmyday, Dimradrest
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Adsfreewatch.net virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Adsfreewatch.net popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people oftentimes work with the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different apps that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these sorts of software are risky, because it is very easy to include a Adsfreewatch.net malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Adsfreewatch.net popup malware may likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual web page. Such web pages are typically packed with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners often approve any type of promos to be posted on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something far more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Adsfreewatch.net pop-up virus can provoke a variety of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may show you the promotions, where you are offered to download one more strange program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal 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 example – 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 interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Adsfreewatch.net pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Adsfreewatch.net adware elimination consists of 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that take care of the results of its action. The removal task is quite simple, because it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its significant resources consumption, as well as some failures that can be critical for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. In addition, various trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will definitely wipe out the viruses from your personal computer and also make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Adsfreewatch.net adware initially.

Removing Adsfreewatch.net 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 Adsfreewatch.net 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 make sure that your web browser will be connected the right DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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.

However, there is one issue that makes things a lot more difficult to repair, especially without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Adsfreewatch.net pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, up until you try to open settings one more time.

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 Adsfreewatch.net Pop-ups?

Name: Adsfreewatch.net

Description: Adsfreewatch.net - 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 Adsfreewatch.net push notifications?” or “why do Adsfreewatch.net pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Adsfreewatch.net 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 suggest it for malware removal.
  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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