Remove Clck-trk Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Clck-trk pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the material of the website you explored or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Clck-trk promotion can cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Clck-trk popups clearing in several methods, and also examining your computer for additional viruses existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Clck-trk 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 Clck-trk pop-ups?

Clck-trk popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a substantial amount of revenue for adware suppliers. These promotions may include explicit information, or have a link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Clck-trk push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-cost and very efficient marketing method¹. It makes it possible for the seller to link the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this chance and buy it. Considering the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favorite thing amidst the advertising departments of huge online sellers.

Nevertheless, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent tricks with the popup ads. And Clck-trk.com advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the Clck-trk site

How have I got the Clck-trk virus?

There are a plenty of methods of getting infected by the adware that create the Clck-trk popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people oftentimes use the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of applications are dangerous, because it is very easy to build in a Clck-trk malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Clck-trk popup virus can also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange website. Such web pages are typically packed with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors often accept any type of promotions to be posted on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also get something much more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Clck-trk popup virus can provoke a lot of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may present you the banners, where you are offered to download another dubious program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these promotions, 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 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 Clck-trk pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Clck-trk adware removal consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and then deal with the results of its action. The elimination process is very easy, due to the fact that it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its huge resources usage, along with some bugs that can be critical for some types of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. In addition, a variety of trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will surely remove the malware from your system and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Clck-trk adware initially.

Removing Clck-trk 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 Clck-trk 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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will connect the proper DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text³:

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.

However, there is one issue that makes the things a lot harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Clck-trk pop-up promotions are adjusting the deep browser configurations, 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 collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, till 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.

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 Clck-trk Pop-ups?

Name: Clck-trk

Description: Clck-trk - 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 Clck-trk.com push notifications?” or “why do Clck-trk.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Clck-trk 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 ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I advise it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.