Gonger.live Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Gonger.live pop-up notices can show up out of the blue, covering the content of the site you explored or opening your web browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Gonger.live advertisement can cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Gonger.live popups removal in a couple of ways, as well as inspecting your computer for other malware presence.

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What are Gonger.live pop-ups?

Gonger.live popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a massive amount of profit for adware suppliers. These promotions may have explicit content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Gonger.live push notification

Gonger.live push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-cost and also very efficient advertising tool1. It enables the vendor to attach the customers’ attention to their site, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and purchase it. Considering the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a much-loved thing among the advertising departments of huge online stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is an excellent basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup ads. And Gonger.live promotions is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a info for the Gonger.live site
Site Gonger.live
Hosting AS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
United States, North Bergen
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 159.223.153.123
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Sossiotron, Rupontihecliffsw, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Gonger.live virus?

There are a lot of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that create the Gonger.live popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people regularly use the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various utilities that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of software are dangerous, since it is very easy to integrate a Gonger.live 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.

Gonger.live popup virus can likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange web page. Such web pages are generally loaded with intense and blinking ads, and their owners generally approve any kind of promotions to be published on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise get something far more hazardous, 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 programs, like Gonger.live pop-up virus can cause a wide range of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may display you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often spread with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, 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 dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of 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 and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Gonger.live pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Gonger.live adware clearing consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and after that correct the consequences of its action. The removal process is pretty easy, since it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its significant resources utilization, as well as some problems that may be crucial for some groups of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. What’s more, a variety of trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will undoubtedly remove the viruses from your system and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Gonger.live adware initially.

Removing Gonger.live 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 Gonger.live 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 browser will be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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 more difficult to restore, especially without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are used to show you the Gonger.live pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, 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 Gonger.live Pop-ups?

Name: Gonger.live

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