Alonghelper.com Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Alonghelper.com pop-up notices can show up out of the blue, covering the subject of the page you explored or opening your web browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Alonghelper.com ad can lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Alonghelper.com popups clearing in a couple of manners, and also inspecting your personal computer for additional viruses presence.

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What are Alonghelper.com pop-ups?

Alonghelper.com popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a large amount of earnings for adware suppliers. These advertisements might contain explicit composition, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Alonghelper.com push notification

Alonghelper.com push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-priced and really successful marketing tool1. It allows the vendor to attach the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favorite thing among the advertising teams of large internet retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable plan could not be missed by malware creators. Option to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Alonghelper.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Alonghelper.com
SiteAlonghelper.com
HostingAS39572 DataWeb Global Group B.V.
United States, Washington
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address192.243.59.20
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorActivealibi, Nakedstreaming, Stoutlionslick
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Alonghelper.com virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that create the Alonghelper.com popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users frequently use the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these sorts of software are risky, since it is very easy to build in a Alonghelper.com malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Alonghelper.com popup virus can likewise be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are generally packed with bright and blinking ads, and their owners often permit any kind of promos to be published on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise get something much more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the large 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 undesirable applications, like Alonghelper.com pop-up virus may cause a lot of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may show you the banners, 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 applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading 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 tapping these ads, they may be clicked by someone 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 solve it without information loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Alonghelper.com pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Alonghelper.com adware elimination contains 2 sections. First, we need to remove the malware, and then repair the results of its activity. The removal task is quite easy, since it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its huge resources utilization, as well as some defects that may be crucial for some categories of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. In addition, a variety of trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will surely wipe out the viruses from your computer and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Alonghelper.com adware first.

Removing Alonghelper.com 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 Alonghelper.com 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 make sure that your browser will connect the right DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, after that 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.

However, there is one issue that makes things a lot harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Alonghelper.com pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, 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 Alonghelper.com Pop-ups?

Name: Alonghelper.com

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