Equames Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Equames pop-up alerts can appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you explored or opening your browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Equames advertisement can result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Equames popups removal in various ways, as well as inspecting your system for other viruses presence.

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What are Equames pop-ups?

Equames popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a massive amount of revenue for adware representatives. These advertisements may include explicit information, or have a link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Equames push notification

Equames push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, affordable and also very effective advertising tool1. It allows the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will surely use this chance and buy it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a favorite thing amidst the marketing departments of large online stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to show the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup promotions. And Equames.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Equames
Site Equames.com
Hosting AS396190 Leaseweb USA, Inc.
United States, Seattle
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 108.62.157.47
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Romancedating, Flatcapspriggy, Liffsandupa
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Equames virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the Equames popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people regularly use the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of applications are dangerous, due to the fact that it is quite easy to include a Equames malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Equames popup malware may likewise be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange site. Such web pages are usually filled with bright and blinking ads, and their owners often approve any kind of promotions to be posted on their web page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur 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 substantial 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 undesirable programs, like Equames popup virus can initiate a variety of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may show you the advertisements, where you are offered to download one more unknown program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very 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 advertisements are also exploited as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds 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 solve it without data loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Equames adware elimination consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and afterwards repair the effects of its action. The removal procedure is quite simple, because it may be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its significant resources consumption, as well as some failures that can be serious for some categories of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. What’s more, different trojan viruses can shut off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will certainly eliminate the viruses from your computer and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Equames adware first.

Removing Equames 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 Equames 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 ensure that your web browser will be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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 a lot more difficult to restore, specifically without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Equames pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, till you try 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 Equames Pop-ups?

Name: Equames

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