Captchatest.top Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Captchatest.top pop-up notifications may appear unexpectedly, covering the post of the page you visited or opening your browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Captchatest.top ad can trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Captchatest.top popups clearing in various methods, and also checking your computer for additional malware existence.

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What are Captchatest.top pop-ups?

Captchatest.top popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a large volume of income for adware distributors. These advertisements might include explicit content, or have a link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Captchatest.top push notification

Captchatest.top push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, affordable and extremely productive marketing method1. It permits the seller to link the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will surely use this opportunity and get it. Considering the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favorite thing among the marketing teams of large internet sellers.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to show the popup ads by force to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup promotions. And Captchatest.top promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Captchatest.top
SiteCaptchatest.top
HostingAS24940 Hetzner Online GmbH
Germany, Oberdorla
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address162.55.59.222
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorAcplat, Esoftwarehelp, Mac
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Captchatest.top virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Captchatest.top popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is supplied as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people frequently utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are risky, due to the fact that it is quite easy to build in a Captchatest.top malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Captchatest.top popup malware can additionally be hidden in the ad somewhere on the odd site. Such sites are typically filled with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally accept any promos to be published on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise receive something far more hazardous, 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 undesirable programs, like Captchatest.top popup virus can initiate a wide range of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications can show you the ads, where you are offered to get one more strange program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, 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 PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware 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 makes use of your 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 remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Captchatest.top adware elimination includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and afterwards take care of the results of its activity. The elimination procedure is really simple, due to the fact that it may be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its large resources consumption, along with some errors that may be serious for some groups of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its use is likely impossible. In addition, various trojan viruses can disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will certainly remove the malware from your system and create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s take care of Captchatest.top adware first.

Removing Captchatest.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.
  • 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 Captchatest.top 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 web browser will definitely be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s 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 things a lot more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Captchatest.top pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the typical, till you try to open settings once 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 Captchatest.top Pop-ups?

Name: Captchatest.top

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

  1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and 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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