Click-This-Special Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Click-This-Special pop-up notices may show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the site you checked or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking the Click-This-Special promotion can trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Click-This-Special popups removal in several ways, and also inspecting your computer for other viruses presence.

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What are Click-This-Special pop-ups?

Click-This-Special popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a significant volume of earnings for adware distributors. These promotions might consist of sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Click-This-Special push notification

Click-This-Special push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-priced and also extremely effective advertising instrument1. It permits the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and buy it. Considering the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a favorite thing amongst the marketing teams of huge internet sellers.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware attack is an excellent basis for malicious adjustments with the popup ads. And Click-this-special.video promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Click-This-Special
SiteClick-this-special.video
HostingAS60781 LeaseWeb Netherlands B.V.
Netherlands, The Hague
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address213.227.145.147
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorLog, Diguver, Auriga
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Click-This-Special virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Click-This-Special popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of individuals oftentimes work with the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of software are unsafe, because it is extremely easy to integrate a Click-This-Special malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Click-This-Special popup virus can additionally be concealed in the ad somewhere on the unusual web page. Such sites are usually full of bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally accept any promos to be published on their web page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise get something a lot more unsafe, 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 undesirable programs, like Click-This-Special pop-up virus may cause a variety of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications may show you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more strange application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions 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 can be clicked by whoever who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Click-This-Special pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Click-This-Special adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and after that fix the consequences of its action. The removal process is very easy, due to the fact that it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its substantial resources usage, along with some defects that can be serious for some types of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. In addition, various trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will definitely exterminate the viruses from your personal computer and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Click-This-Special adware initially.

Removing Click-This-Special 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 Click-This-Special 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 be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your 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 problem that makes the things a lot harder to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Click-This-Special pop-up ads are changing the deep browser settings, 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 soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, up until you try to open settings once 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 Click-This-Special Pop-ups?

Name: Click-This-Special

Description: Click-This-Special - 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 Click-this-special.video push notifications?” or “why do Click-this-special.video pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Click-This-Special 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 ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also 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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