Remove Akwets Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Akwets pop-up notifications may show up out of the blue, covering the material of the page you checked or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Akwets advertisement may result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Akwets popups clearing in multiple methods, as well as checking your PC for extra viruses existence.

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What are Akwets pop-ups?

Akwets popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a major amount of income for adware suppliers. These advertisements might contain sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Akwets push notification

Akwets push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, affordable and extremely effective marketing solution1. It enables the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their website, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is provided at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this opportunity and purchase it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favourite thing among the advertising departments of huge internet retailers.

However, such a successful scheme could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to show the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Akwets.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the Akwets site
Site Akwets.com
Hosting AS39572 DataWeb Global Group B.V.
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 185.56.234.205
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior News, Rplnd45, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Akwets virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting infected by the adware that create the Akwets popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of individuals often make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various utilities that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of applications are risky, since it is extremely simple to build in a Akwets malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Akwets popup malware may also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual site. Such websites are usually packed with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners often approve any type of promotions to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise get something a lot more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution 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 applications, like Akwets popup virus may cause a variety of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may present you the banners, where you are offered to download one more strange program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these ads, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Akwets adware clearing consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and after that take care of the effects of its activity. The elimination task is really simple, since it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its huge resources utilization, as well as some errors that may be critical for some types of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will definitely eliminate the viruses from your personal computer and make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s take care of Akwets adware first.

Removing Akwets 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 Akwets 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 connect the proper DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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 a lot harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variations that are used to show you the Akwets pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, until you try 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.

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 Akwets Pop-ups?

Name: Akwets

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