How to remove Clickgate pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Clickgate pop-up notices may show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the page you went to or opening your web browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Clickgate ad may trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Clickgate popups clearing in multiple manners, and also inspecting your computer for additional malware existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Clickgate 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 Clickgate pop-ups?

Clickgate popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a substantial volume of profit for adware distributors. These ads might contain sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to harmful content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Clickgate push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, affordable and also very successful marketing method¹. It allows the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their website, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is offered at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this chance and get it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a favourite thing among the advertising departments of large internet retailers.

However, such a profitable plan could not be missed by malware creators. Option to show the popup ads by force to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup promotions. And Clickgate09.biz promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the Clickgate

How have I got the Clickgate virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that cause the Clickgate popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people oftentimes use the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these sorts of software are unsafe, because it is quite easy to include a Clickgate 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.

Clickgate popup virus may also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange website. Such web pages are usually filled with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners often accept any promos to be posted on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise get something a lot 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 programs, like Clickgate pop-up virus may cause a variety of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications may present you the advertisements, where you are offered to download another dubious application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these advertisements, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Clickgate adware elimination consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and afterwards deal with the effects of its activity. The elimination task is really simple, due to the fact that it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its large resources utilization, as well as some defects that may be crucial for some groups of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses are able to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will undoubtedly remove the malware from your system and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Clickgate adware first.

Removing Clickgate 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 Clickgate 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 make sure that your web browser will be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines³:

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 repair, particularly without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Clickgate pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, 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.

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 Clickgate Pop-ups?

Name: Clickgate

Description: Clickgate - 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 Clickgate09.biz push notifications?” or “why do Clickgate09.biz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Clickgate 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 recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.