How to remove Checker-online pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Checker-online pop-up alerts can show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you explored or opening your web browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Checker-online advertisement may cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Checker-online popups removal in multiple manners, as well as checking your PC for other malware existence.

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What are Checker-online pop-ups?

Checker-online popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a large volume of earnings for adware distributors. These ads might include sometimes shocking material, or have a web link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Checker-online push notification

Checker-online push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, cheap and really productive marketing solution1. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is offered at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favorite thing among the advertising teams of big internet retailers.

However, such a successful scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for malicious manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Checker-online.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the Checker-online site
Site Checker-online.com
Hosting AS35277 LLHOST INC. SRL
Poland, Katowice
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 5.189.255.67
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Izationsuchasr, Artoukfareputf, Getvideoace
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Checker-online virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting infected by the adware that create the Checker-online popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people often utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of software are dangerous, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to integrate a Checker-online malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Checker-online popup virus may also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are usually packed with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners often permit any kind of promos to be posted on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally get something much more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Checker-online pop-up virus may initiate a lot of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications can show you the ads, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Checker-online pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Checker-online adware removal consists of 2 parts. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and afterwards take care of the results of its activity. The elimination task is pretty simple, since it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its huge resources consumption, along with some bugs that may be crucial for some categories of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far 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 certainly eliminate the viruses from your system and also create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s handle Checker-online adware first.

Removing Checker-online 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 Checker-online 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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will definitely connect the proper DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that 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 issue that makes the things a lot more difficult to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Checker-online pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, 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 Checker-online Pop-ups?

Name: Checker-online

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