Remove Captcha-smart.top Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Captcha-smart.top pop-up notifications may show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the website you visited or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking the Captcha-smart.top promotion can cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Captcha-smart.top popups clearing in a couple of manners, and also inspecting your personal computer for additional malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Captcha-smart.top manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Captcha-smart.top pop-ups?

Captcha-smart.top popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a massive amount of earnings for adware distributors. These promotions may include sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is money.

Captcha-smart.top push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-priced and really successful advertising tool¹. It enables the seller to link the customers’ interest to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to buy is provided at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a favorite thing amidst the advertising teams of big internet retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is a perfect basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Captcha-smart.top promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the Captcha-smart.top

How have I got the Captcha-smart.top virus?

There are a number of methods of getting infected by the adware that create the Captcha-smart.top popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users regularly utilize the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of software are dangerous, since it is quite simple to build in a Captcha-smart.top 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.

Captcha-smart.top popup malware can likewise be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual web page. Such sites are typically loaded with colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually accept any kind of promotions to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something far more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Captcha-smart.top pop-up virus may provoke a wide range of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications may present you the advertisements, where you are offered to download another strange application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a spreading way 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 clicking these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your 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 remove the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Captcha-smart.top pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Captcha-smart.top adware elimination contains 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards deal with the consequences of its activity. The removal task is very easy, since it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its huge resources utilization, along with some defects that may be critical for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses are capable to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus tool that will surely exterminate the malware from your PC and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Captcha-smart.top adware first.

Removing Captcha-smart.top 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Captcha-smart.top malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 definitely connect the correct DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text³:

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 issue that makes things much harder to repair, especially without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variants that are used to show you the Captcha-smart.top pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser settings, 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 crash quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the typical, till 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.

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.

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 Captcha-smart.top Pop-ups?

Name: Captcha-smart.top

Description: Captcha-smart.top - 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 Captcha-smart.top push notifications?” or “why do Captcha-smart.top pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Captcha-smart.top 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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1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I advise it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.