Remove Celeb-trending Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Celeb-trending pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the material of the website you checked or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking the Celeb-trending ad can lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Celeb-trending popups clearing in a couple of ways, as well as checking your personal computer for additional malware presence.

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What are Celeb-trending pop-ups?

Celeb-trending popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a substantial volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These promotions might contain explicit material, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Celeb-trending push notification

Celeb-trending push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, affordable and extremely efficient marketing tool1. It permits the seller to attach the customers’ interest to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to buy is available at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this chance and buy it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favorite thing amongst the advertising teams of large online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding system could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to show the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup ads. And Celeb-trending.com ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the Celeb-trending site
Site Celeb-trending.com
Hosting AS60781 LeaseWeb Netherlands B.V.
Netherlands, The Hague
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 213.227.145.147
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Zkgzrv, Loadprogressiveuberdlfile, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Celeb-trending virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that lead to the Celeb-trending popups storm. 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 main website, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people often use the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are dangerous, since it is quite easy to build in a Celeb-trending malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Celeb-trending popup malware may also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual site. Such sites are generally loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often permit any type of promotions to be placed on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally receive something much more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation 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 Celeb-trending popup virus can cause a variety of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may present you the banners, where you are offered to get another dubious application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also used as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Celeb-trending pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Celeb-trending adware removal consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and then repair the effects of its activity. The removal task is quite easy, since it may be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its significant resources utilization, along with some failures that can be pivotal for some groups of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its use is probably impossible. What’s more, a wide range of trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will definitely eliminate the viruses from your PC and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Celeb-trending adware initially.

Removing Celeb-trending 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 Celeb-trending 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 be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your 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.

Nonetheless, there is one trouble that makes the things much harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Celeb-trending pop-up promotions are adjusting 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 collapse soon. 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, until you attempt 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 Celeb-trending Pop-ups?

Name: Celeb-trending

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