Remove Gate4 Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Gate4 pop-up notifications may show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the website you explored or opening your web browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Gate4 advertisement may trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Gate4 popups clearing in several ways, and also checking your system for other viruses presence.

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What are Gate4 pop-ups?

Gate4 popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a large amount of profit for adware representatives. These ads might contain explicit composition, or have a link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Gate4 push notification

Gate4 push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, cheap and also very effective marketing method1. It allows the seller to link the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a favourite thing amidst the marketing departments of huge internet retailers.

However, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup promotions. And Gate4.xyz ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Gate4 site
SiteGate4.xyz
HostingAS202053 UpCloud Ltd
Malaysia, Tawau
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address94.237.73.48
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorOnizatop, News, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Gate4 virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Gate4 popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people oftentimes use the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different utilities that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are dangerous, since it is quite easy to build in a Gate4 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.

Gate4 popup virus may likewise be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual web page. Such web pages are in most cases filled with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically accept any kind of promos to be posted on their web page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can also get something far more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the large 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 applications, like Gate4 pop-up virus may cause a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can present you the advertisements, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these promotions, they may be clicked by someone who also uses 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 information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Gate4 pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Gate4 adware elimination consists of 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and then correct the effects of its action. The removal process is quite easy, due to the fact that it may be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its large resources utilization, along with some bugs that may be critical for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. What’s more, various trojan viruses are able to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will certainly wipe out the malware from your computer and also make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Gate4 adware first.

Removing Gate4 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 Gate4 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 ensure that your web browser will definitely be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your 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.

However, there is one problem that makes the things much harder to fix, especially without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Gate4 pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the typical, till you attempt to open settings once again.

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 Gate4 Pop-ups?

Name: Gate4

Description: Gate4 - 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 Gate4.xyz push notifications?” or “why do Gate4.xyz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Gate4 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 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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