Remove Gofenews Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Gofenews pop-up alerts can show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the page you went to or opening your web browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Gofenews advertisement may trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Gofenews popups clearing in several methods, as well as inspecting your personal computer for other malware existence.

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What are Gofenews pop-ups?

Gofenews popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a massive volume of earnings for adware representatives. These ads might include explicit information, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Gofenews push notification

Gofenews push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, affordable and very productive advertising tool1. It allows the vendor to attach the customers’ attention to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is provided at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this chance and purchase it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amongst the advertising teams of big online sellers.

Nevertheless, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Option to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is a perfect basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Gofenews.com promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Gofenews
SiteGofenews.com
HostingAS16509 Amazon.com, Inc.
Germany, Frankfurt am Main
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address13.32.29.86
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorShotvideoace, News, Betterex
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Gofenews virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming infected by the adware that lead to the Gofenews popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is delivered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals regularly make use of the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various utilities that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are unsafe, since it is extremely easy to build in a Gofenews 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.

Gofenews popup malware may also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange website. Such sites are in most cases filled with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically permit any kind of promos to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking on 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 undesirable programs, you may likewise receive something a lot more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Gofenews pop-up virus can cause a wide range of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups can present you the ads, where you are offered to download another strange application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also used as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Gofenews adware clearing includes 2 sections. First, we need to deal with the malware, and after that deal with the results of its action. The removal process is really easy, since it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its huge resources utilization, as well as some bugs that can be pivotal for some groups of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Moreover, a wide range of trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will definitely remove the malware from your system and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Gofenews adware initially.

Removing Gofenews 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 Gofenews 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 browser will be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file titled “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 issue that makes the things a lot harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Gofenews pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, 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 Gofenews Pop-ups?

Name: Gofenews

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