Remove Captchatoday.top Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Captchatoday.top pop-up notices may show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you went to or opening your browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Captchatoday.top ad may trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Captchatoday.top popups clearing in a couple of ways, as well as checking your PC for other malware existence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing Captchatoday.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.
Gridinsoft Anti-Malware 6-day trial available.
EULA | Privacy Policy | 10% Off Coupon
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to be the first to know about news and our exclusive materials on information security.

What are Captchatoday.top pop-ups?

Captchatoday.top popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a large volume of profit for adware representatives. These ads might have sometimes shocking material, or have a link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Captchatoday.top push notification

Captchatoday.top push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, affordable and also really effective marketing instrument1. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is available at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a much-loved thing among the marketing departments of huge internet stores.

However, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by virus developers. Option to show the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware attack is a perfect basis for malicious adjustments with the popup ads. And Captchatoday.top promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Captchatoday.top site
SiteCaptchatoday.top
HostingAS35277 LLHOST INC. SRL
Netherlands, Haarlem
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address45.155.120.178
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorReeprati, Astirvantblog, Hereabithe
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Captchatoday.top virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming infected by the adware that cause the Captchatoday.top popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is presented as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals oftentimes work with the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are dangerous, due to the fact that it is very easy to include a Captchatoday.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.

Captchatoday.top popup malware may also be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual web page. Such websites are in most cases full of colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors generally permit any promotions to be posted on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can also get something far more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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 applications, like Captchatoday.top pop-up virus may cause a wide range of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may show you the advertisements, where you are offered to download one more strange program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also exploited as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these banners, 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 information loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Captchatoday.top adware elimination includes 2 parts. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards correct the consequences of its activity. The removal process is quite simple, due to the fact that it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources usage, along with some bugs that can be crucial for some groups of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Moreover, a wide range of trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will undoubtedly remove the malware from your computer and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Captchatoday.top adware initially.

Removing Captchatoday.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 Captchatoday.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 ensure that your browser will definitely connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then 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.

Nonetheless, there is one issue that makes the things much harder to repair, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Captchatoday.top pop-up advertisements are adjusting 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 certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards 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 Captchatoday.top Pop-ups?

Name: Captchatoday.top

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

Sending
User Review
3.25 (4 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

References

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

Leave a Reply

Sending