How to remove Check-the-article pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Check-the-article pop-up notifications may show up out of the blue, covering the content of the website you visited or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking the Check-the-article advertisement can result in the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of Check-the-article popups removal in several methods, as well as checking your PC for other viruses existence.

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What are Check-the-article pop-ups?

Check-the-article popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a major amount of profit for adware representatives. These promotions might consist of explicit material, or have a link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Check-the-article push notification

Check-the-article push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, cheap and very efficient marketing tool1. It permits the seller to attach the customers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will surely use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising instrument is a favorite thing among the advertising teams of big online stores.

Nonetheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Check-the-article.com advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Check-the-article site
SiteCheck-the-article.com
HostingAS60781 LeaseWeb Netherlands B.V.
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address213.227.149.216
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorUp, Luxprizeclub, Performdevelopedgreatlythefile
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Check-the-article virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that lead to the Check-the-article popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people often use the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are risky, since it is extremely easy to include a Check-the-article malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Check-the-article popup virus can likewise be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange web page. Such websites are in most cases packed with bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually permit any promotions to be published on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally get something much more dangerous, 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 unwanted programs, like Check-the-article popup virus can initiate a wide range of different problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may display you the advertisements, where you are offered to get another dubious program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Check-the-article pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Check-the-article adware removal includes 2 sections. First, we need to deal with the malware, and after that correct the consequences of its action. The elimination procedure is really easy, because it can be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its substantial resources consumption, along with some defects that can be pivotal for some categories of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its use is likely impossible. In addition, different trojan viruses have the ability to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will certainly wipe out the malware from your computer and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s manage Check-the-article adware first.

Removing Check-the-article 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 Check-the-article 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 proper DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that 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.

Nevertheless, there is one trouble that makes the things much harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variants that are used to show you the Check-the-article pop-up ads are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, up until 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.

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 Check-the-article Pop-ups?

Name: Check-the-article

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