Remove Cleannotifications Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Cleannotifications pop-up notices may show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you explored or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Cleannotifications promotion can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Cleannotifications popups clearing in a couple of methods, as well as inspecting your personal computer for other malware existence.

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What are Cleannotifications pop-ups?

Cleannotifications popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a significant amount of earnings for adware distributors. These advertisements might consist of sometimes shocking information, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Cleannotifications push notification

Cleannotifications push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, cheap and also really successful marketing method1. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is available at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will surely use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favourite thing amongst the marketing departments of large online retailers.

Nonetheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by virus creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the targets of malware attack is an excellent basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup ads. And Cleannotifications.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Cleannotifications site
Site Cleannotifications.com
Hosting AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 172.67.195.78
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Preparedorderwn1, Videosearchcloud, Acefarlessc
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Cleannotifications virus?

There are a number of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that lead to the Cleannotifications popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may likewise 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 plenty of users frequently utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of software are dangerous, due to the fact that it is very simple to include a Cleannotifications malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Cleannotifications popup virus can additionally be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange web page. Such websites are typically packed with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners generally accept any kind of promos to be published on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise get something a lot more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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 programs, like Cleannotifications popup virus may initiate a variety of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups can display you the ads, where you are offered to download one more dubious application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may 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 potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Cleannotifications pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Cleannotifications adware clearing contains 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and then fix the results of its activity. The elimination task is pretty simple, since it can be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its huge resources consumption, as well as some bugs that can be crucial for some types of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. In addition, a variety of trojan viruses are able to shut off 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 utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will definitely wipe out the viruses from your system and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s take care of Cleannotifications adware first.

Removing Cleannotifications 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 Cleannotifications 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 connect the appropriate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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.

Nonetheless, there is one issue that makes things much more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the Cleannotifications pop-up ads are changing 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 quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, up until 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.

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 Cleannotifications Pop-ups?

Name: Cleannotifications

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