How to remove AdultHQ pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
AdultHQ porn pop-up notices can show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the website you went to or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking the AdultHQ promotion can trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of AdultHQ porn popups removal in various ways, as well as examining your computer for additional malware existence.

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What are AdultHQ pop-ups?

AdultHQ popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a substantial volume of revenue for adware suppliers. These promotions may include explicit content, or have a link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

AdultHQ push notification

AdultHQ push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, affordable and really efficient advertising method1. It allows the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is offered at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this chance and get it. Considering the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a favourite thing among the marketing departments of huge internet sellers.

Nevertheless, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by virus creators. Option to show the porn advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded tricks with the porn promotions. And Adulthq.net ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the AdultHQ site
SiteAdulthq.net
HostingAS24940 Hetzner Online GmbH
Germany, Berlin
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address168.119.150.125
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorProcessormedia, Watchintenselyoriginaltheproduct, Synchighlyswifttheproduct
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the AdultHQ virus?

There are a lot of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that cause the AdultHQ popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is supplied as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people regularly work with the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are dangerous, since it is extremely simple to include a AdultHQ 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.

AdultHQ popup virus may additionally be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the odd website. Such sites are typically packed with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often permit any promotions to be published on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can also get something far more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like AdultHQ pop-up virus may initiate a variety of different problems on your PC. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications can show you the ads, where you are offered to get one more dubious program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread 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 potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these ads, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – 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 anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of AdultHQ adware elimination contains 2 parts. First, we need to deal with the malware, and then take care of the consequences of its action. The elimination process is quite easy, due to the fact that it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its large resources utilization, along with some problems that may be serious for some types of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. In addition, various trojan viruses can disable the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will certainly erase the viruses from your PC and also make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with AdultHQ adware initially.

Removing AdultHQ 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 AdultHQ 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 definitely be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file named “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.

However, there is one issue that makes the things a lot more difficult to repair, particularly without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are utilized to show you the AdultHQ pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, up until you attempt 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 AdultHQ Pop-ups?

Name: AdultHQ

Description: AdultHQ - 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 Adulthq.net push notifications?” or “why do Adulthq.net pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with AdultHQ 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 advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and the reasons why I advise 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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