Cleardating.top Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Cleardating.top pop-up notifications can show up out of the blue, covering the material of the site you explored or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Cleardating.top advertisement may cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Cleardating.top popups removal in multiple methods, and also inspecting your computer for other viruses presence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing Cleardating.top 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.
Gridinsoft Anti-Malware 6-day trial available.
EULA | Privacy Policy | 10% Off Coupon
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to be the first to know about news and our exclusive materials on information security.

What are Cleardating.top pop-ups?

Cleardating.top popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a large amount of earnings for adware distributors. These advertisements might have sometimes shocking content, or have a link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is money.

Cleardating.top push notification

Cleardating.top push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-cost and also really efficient marketing tool1. It allows the seller to link the customers’ attention to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this chance and purchase it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising teams of huge internet stores.

However, such a rewarding system could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for malicious tricks with the popup promotions. And Cleardating.top promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Cleardating.top
Site Cleardating.top
Hosting AS35277 LLHOST INC. SRL
Netherlands, Haarlem
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 45.155.120.143
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Ostlyhewould, Authenticguarding, Thbstvd
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Cleardating.top virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting infected by the adware that create the Cleardating.top popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is supplied as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users often utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various apps that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of applications are risky, because it is very simple to include a Cleardating.top malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Cleardating.top popup virus can also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange site. Such sites are usually loaded with colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually accept any type of promos to be published on their web page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also receive something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Cleardating.top popup virus may cause a lot of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may display you the banners, where you are offered to get another strange program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Cleardating.top pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Cleardating.top adware clearing consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and after that take care of the effects of its action. The removal procedure is quite easy, since it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its significant resources usage, along with some problems that may be crucial for some groups of users, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Moreover, a wide range of trojan viruses are capable to disable the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will undoubtedly erase the viruses from your PC and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Cleardating.top adware first.

Removing Cleardating.top 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 Cleardating.top 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 web browser will definitely be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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 trouble that makes things a lot harder to fix, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are used to show you the Cleardating.top pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, up until you attempt 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 Cleardating.top Pop-ups?

Name: Cleardating.top

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

Sending
User Review
3.25 (4 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

References

  1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I suggest 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.

Leave a Reply

Sending