Remove Airclewest Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Airclewest pop-up alerts can appear out of the blue, covering the material of the site you visited or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Airclewest promotion may result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Airclewest popups removal in a couple of manners, and also examining your personal computer for other malware existence.

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What are Airclewest pop-ups?

Airclewest popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a massive amount of revenue for adware representatives. These advertisements may include sometimes shocking content, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Airclewest push notification

Airclewest push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-priced and really successful advertising tool1. It enables the seller to attach the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and get it. Taking into consideration the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a favorite thing amongst the marketing teams of big internet retail stores.

However, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Airclewest.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Airclewest
SiteAirclewest.com
HostingAS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address44.195.137.121
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorThecred, Fresh, Gmansu
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Airclewest virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that cause the Airclewest popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users often make use of the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are risky, because it is quite simple to build in a Airclewest malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Airclewest popup virus may additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual website. Such web pages are typically filled with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually permit any promos to be posted on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also get something much more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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 Airclewest popup virus can cause a variety of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can show you the ads, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually 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 unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also used as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your PC – 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 applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Airclewest adware elimination includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards fix the consequences of its action. The removal procedure is really simple, because it may be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its substantial resources consumption, along with some bugs that can be crucial for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will surely wipe out the malware from your computer and also create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Airclewest adware first.

Removing Airclewest 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 Airclewest 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 browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that 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 much harder to repair, specifically without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Airclewest pop-up ads are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and after that 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 Airclewest Pop-ups?

Name: Airclewest

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