Remove Darkclick.site Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Darkclick.site pop-up notifications may appear out of the blue, covering the material of the website you checked or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Darkclick.site advertisement can lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Darkclick.site popups clearing in several ways, as well as inspecting your system for additional viruses existence.

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What are Darkclick.site pop-ups?

Darkclick.site popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a major volume of revenue for adware representatives. These promotions may consist of explicit composition, or have a web link to harmful content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Darkclick.site push notification

Darkclick.site push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, affordable and also extremely effective marketing tool1. It makes it possible for the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their website, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this possibility and buy it. Considering the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a much-loved thing amongst the advertising departments of huge internet retail stores.

However, such a profitable plan could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware attack is an ideal basis for malicious adjustments with the popup promotions. And Darkclick.site promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the Darkclick.site site
SiteDarkclick.site
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
United States, Santa Clara
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address137.184.85.42
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorRplnd5, Bestreceipe1, Newyorkjornal
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Darkclick.site virus?

There are a number of methods of getting infected by the adware that result in the Darkclick.site 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 may likewise be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is supplied as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people frequently utilize the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these types of applications are unsafe, because it is extremely simple to build in a Darkclick.site malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Darkclick.site popup malware can likewise be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the odd site. Such web pages are generally full of intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically permit any kind of promotions to be posted on their web page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally receive something a lot more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Darkclick.site pop-up virus may cause a lot of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups can display you the promotions, where you are offered to download another dubious program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal 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 example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your 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 loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Darkclick.site pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Darkclick.site adware elimination includes 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards correct the results of its activity. The elimination process is really easy, due to the fact that it can be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its large resources usage, along with some errors that may be serious for some categories of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will certainly wipe out the malware from your personal computer and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Darkclick.site adware first.

Removing Darkclick.site 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 Darkclick.site 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 correct DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that 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 things much more difficult to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware versions that are used to show you the Darkclick.site pop-up advertisements are adjusting the deep browser configurations, 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 large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, till 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 Darkclick.site Pop-ups?

Name: Darkclick.site

Description: Darkclick.site - 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 Darkclick.site push notifications?” or “why do Darkclick.site pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Darkclick.site 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 advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and the reasons why I recommend 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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