Remove Ckk.ai Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Ckk.ai pop-up alerts may show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the site you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Ckk.ai advertisement can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Ckk.ai popups clearing in multiple manners, as well as inspecting your PC for additional malware presence.

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What are Ckk.ai pop-ups?

Ckk.ai popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a large amount of income for adware distributors. These promotions may contain explicit information, or have a web link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Ckk.ai push notification

Ckk.ai push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, cheap and also really productive marketing method1. It permits the seller to attach the customers’ interest to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is provided at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a favourite thing amongst the marketing departments of huge internet retail stores.

However, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware attack is an ideal basis for malicious adjustments with the popup ads. And Ckk.ai advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Ckk.ai
SiteCkk.ai
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address172.67.214.204
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorEaconeno, Arfanbajt, Beta
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Ckk.ai virus?

There are a lot of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the Ckk.ai popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users oftentimes make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are dangerous, since it is very easy to build in a Ckk.ai 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.

Ckk.ai popup malware may additionally be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are in most cases full of bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually accept any type of promotions to be published on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can also get something a lot more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Ckk.ai pop-up virus can initiate a lot of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups can present you the banners, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, 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 someone who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Ckk.ai pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Ckk.ai adware clearing includes 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards take care of the results of its activity. The elimination task is really simple, since it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its significant resources usage, as well as some failures that may be crucial for some categories of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses have the ability to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will surely exterminate the malware from your personal computer and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Ckk.ai adware initially.

Removing Ckk.ai 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 Ckk.ai 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 connect the right DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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 issue that makes the things much harder to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are used to show you the Ckk.ai pop-up ads are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the normal, 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 Ckk.ai Pop-ups?

Name: Ckk.ai

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