Remove Contentgate Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Contentgate pop-up notices can show up out of the blue, covering the content of the site you checked or opening your web browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Contentgate ad can result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guide of Contentgate popups removal in various methods, as well as examining your system for extra viruses presence.

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What are Contentgate pop-ups?

Quick reference

And once that is out of the way, advertisers can even use it to their advantage on their own websites. In fact, in this article we are all about pop-up ads in a nutshell.

When I was growing up in the USA, I could read books and books on all sorts of topics and they were fun, but they took the “hippie” to an extreme point; the content was so overwhelming and they made me go out in style to get into the bookstore and see it all or I could read and have fun with the other people. There are also some fine books and a lot of cool gadgets online, but you have to look at the books that I loved or saw and try and understand their content. In fact, I felt like I was spending too much time on the books with my parents.

Contentgate popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a major volume of income for adware representatives. These advertisements might contain explicit content, or have a link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Contentgate push notification

Contentgate push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, low-cost and extremely effective marketing instrument1. It allows the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is provided at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favourite thing amongst the marketing teams of huge internet retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to show the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware attack is a perfect basis for malicious manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Contentgate.uno promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Contentgate
Site Contentgate.uno
Hosting AS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 178.62.225.201
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Lodtis, Newsmaster, Humisnee
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Contentgate virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the Contentgate popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals regularly utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of programs are risky, because it is extremely easy to include a Contentgate 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.

Contentgate popup malware may additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual web page. Such websites are generally full of bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners often accept any promotions to be posted on their page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also receive something a lot more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation 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 Contentgate popup virus may provoke a variety of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications can display you the advertisements, where you are offered to download one more strange application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted 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 spreading way by various 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 someone who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Contentgate adware removal consists of 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards repair the results of its action. The elimination procedure is really simple, since it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its large resources utilization, as well as some problems that may be pivotal for some groups of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. In addition, various trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will certainly remove the viruses from your PC and also create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s manage Contentgate adware initially.

Removing Contentgate 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 Contentgate 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 make sure that your web browser will be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your 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.

Nevertheless, there is one trouble that makes things much harder to fix, specifically without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Contentgate pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, up 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 Contentgate Pop-ups?

Name: Contentgate

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