Remove Goalmedia Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Goalmedia pop-up notices may show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you visited or opening your web browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Goalmedia ad may result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of Goalmedia popups clearing in various manners, as well as checking your computer for additional viruses existence.

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What are Goalmedia pop-ups?

Goalmedia popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a massive volume of income for adware distributors. These advertisements may consist of sometimes shocking material, or have a link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Goalmedia push notification

Goalmedia push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, cheap and also really effective advertising solution1. It enables the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to buy is provided at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and purchase it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amidst the marketing departments of big online stores.

Nonetheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is a great basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Goalmedia.club ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the Goalmedia
SiteGoalmedia.club
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address178.62.225.201
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNews, Aristo, Checkup01
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Goalmedia virus?

There are a number of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Goalmedia popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people often work with the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various utilities that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these types of programs are risky, since it is extremely simple to build in a Goalmedia 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.

Goalmedia popup virus may additionally be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange web page. Such websites are in most cases packed with intense and blinking ads, and their owners usually permit any kind of promos to be posted on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something much more risky, 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 Goalmedia pop-up virus may provoke a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can present you the banners, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also chosen as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these banners, they may be clicked by whoever 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 get rid of the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Goalmedia adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and then repair the consequences of its activity. The removal task is quite easy, since it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its significant resources consumption, along with some problems that can be crucial for some types of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will definitely wipe out the malware from your system and also make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s handle Goalmedia adware initially.

Removing Goalmedia 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 Goalmedia 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 website you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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 the things a lot more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Goalmedia pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, till you try to open settings 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 Goalmedia Pop-ups?

Name: Goalmedia

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