Remove Clickdark.xyz Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Clickdark.xyz pop-up alerts can appear out of the blue, covering the material of the website you visited or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Clickdark.xyz ad can lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Clickdark.xyz popups clearing in several methods, and also inspecting your computer for other malware existence.

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What are Clickdark.xyz pop-ups?

Clickdark.xyz popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a significant volume of income for adware representatives. These promotions might have sometimes shocking material, or have a link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Clickdark.xyz push notification

Clickdark.xyz push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-cost and also extremely successful marketing method1. It permits the vendor to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this possibility and get it. Taking into consideration the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favorite thing amidst the advertising teams of large internet sellers.

Nevertheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is a great basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup promotions. And Clickdark.xyz ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Clickdark.xyz site
SiteClickdark.xyz
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address172.67.205.5
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorBnewsblite, Acclaimupdatephone, Ourwowspot
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Clickdark.xyz virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Clickdark.xyz popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is offered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals oftentimes work with the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different apps that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these types of applications are unsafe, because it is very easy to integrate a Clickdark.xyz 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.

Clickdark.xyz popup virus can likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual web page. Such websites are in most cases filled with bright and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often accept any promotions to be posted on their page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also receive something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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 unwanted applications, like Clickdark.xyz pop-up virus can provoke a wide range of troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications may present you the advertisements, where you are offered to get one more unknown program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your personal computer – 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 wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Clickdark.xyz pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Clickdark.xyz adware elimination contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and after that repair the consequences of its activity. The removal process is really simple, since it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its huge resources consumption, as well as some defects that may be critical for some categories of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses have the ability to turn 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 antivirus device that will certainly exterminate the malware from your system and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s deal with Clickdark.xyz adware initially.

Removing Clickdark.xyz 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 Clickdark.xyz 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 make sure that your web browser will definitely be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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.

However, there is one problem that makes things much more difficult to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Clickdark.xyz pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, until you try to open settings once more.

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 Clickdark.xyz Pop-ups?

Name: Clickdark.xyz

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