Remove Check-This-Message Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Check-This-Message pop-up notifications may show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the website you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Check-This-Message promotion may trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Check-This-Message popups removal in a couple of methods, and also checking your computer for other malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Check-This-Message 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 Check-This-Message pop-ups?

Check-This-Message popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a significant amount of income for adware representatives. These advertisements may contain sometimes shocking content, or have a link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Check-This-Message push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, cheap and really productive marketing instrument¹. It allows the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this possibility and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a favourite thing among the advertising departments of large online sellers.

However, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to show the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware attack is an excellent basis for malicious adjustments with the popup ads. And Check-this-message.xyz ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Check-This-Message site

How have I got the Check-This-Message virus?

There are a lot of methods of getting infected by the adware that cause the Check-This-Message popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is offered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals regularly utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these types of programs are risky, because it is extremely simple to integrate a Check-This-Message 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.

Check-This-Message popup virus can likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd website. Such websites are typically filled with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically permit any promos to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something a lot more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Check-This-Message popup virus may provoke a variety of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may present you the advertisements, where you are offered to download one more unknown application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, 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 PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also chosen as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal 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 and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Check-This-Message pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Check-This-Message adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and then correct the results of its activity. The removal task is pretty easy, due to the fact that it can be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its substantial resources utilization, along with some errors that may be critical for some groups of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. What’s more, a wide range of trojan viruses can shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus tool that will surely exterminate the malware from your personal computer and also create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Check-This-Message adware first.

Removing Check-This-Message 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 Check-This-Message 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 ensure that your browser will connect the appropriate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following content³:

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 a lot more difficult to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are used to show you the Check-This-Message pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, 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.

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 Check-This-Message Pop-ups?

Name: Check-This-Message

Description: Check-This-Message - 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-this-message.xyz push notifications?” or “why do Check-this-message.xyz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Check-This-Message 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 the reasons why I suggest it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.